Mobilize
Caroline Monnet
Arsenal Contemporary is proud to present Mobilize, a short film by Caroline Monnet. Previously premiered at TIFF and Sundance, this marks the film’s debut presentation in New York.
Monnet accesses the archive in the interest of distorting its semblance of order and undermining the mythologies that keep it in tact. Disorder, here, means a reversal of hierarchies and reinstitution narratives of Indigenous persons as self-possessed, proficient subjects. Monnet splices and transfigures segments of films taken from the National Film Board of Canada’s archive, such as César’s Bark Canoe (1971), Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1974), and High Steel (1965), shifting the perspective from white marvel to collective affirmation.
The video weaves through scenes of labour in industrial and so-called natural settings, from snow shoe building to the construction of New York’s cityscape. In both landscapes, Indigenous subjects are posited as builders, people who are in sync with their environment and navigate their surroundings with ease.
Giving equal weight to what has traditionally been thought of as craft and industry, Mobilize underscores how labor’s integrity is relative to who benefits from its exertion. These images inherently call into question how other classes have accumulated wealth through projects once belonging to Indigenous communities, while enforcing these communities’ demands of self-governance.
Tanya Tagaq’s song “Uja” serves as the soundscape for Mobilize, with the acclaimed Inuk throat singer’s breath functioning as a rhythmic pulse to fervent scenes. As the title encourages, Mobilize is a call to action— a communal forward thrust unyielding to Colonialist notions of progress.