Archer Pechawis
New Media & Performance Artist
Performance artist, new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator Archer Pechawis was born in Alert Bay, BC in 1963. He has been a practicing artist since 1984 with particular interest in the intersection of Plains Cree culture and digital technology, merging "traditional" objects such as hand drums with digital video and audio sampling. His work has been exhibited across Canada and in Paris France, and featured in publications such as Fuse Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review. Archer has been the recipient of many Canada Council, British Columbia and Ontario Arts Council awards, and won the Best New Media Award at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Best Experimental Short at imagineNATIVE in 2009.
Archer works extensively with Native youth as part of his art practice, teaching performance and digital media for various organizations and in the public school system. Of Cree and European ancestry, he is a member of Mistawasis First Nation, Saskatchewan.
Quote
The description for a professional development workshop I taught for Native Earth Theatre
“We often hear our political and cultural leaders speak of the importance of education for the youth in our communities, yet what we so frequently neglect are the gaping holes in our own knowledge. The term "New Media" has been bandied about for nearly two decades now, yet we in the arts rarely know what this mysterious term actually means, let alone what implications it has for us as artists, for our respective mediums, or as a force of change in our traditional cultures. My intent is to de-mystify digital media and empower workshop participants to embrace new technologies in their art practice.”