photo by: Roberto Sifuentes

Bently Spang is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who works in video, performance, and installation. Born into the Northern Cheyenne Nation in 1960, Spang’s work focuses on his experience as a contemporary Cheyenne and he tackles the daily issues that he deals with surrounding his identity. His work is in museum and private collections in the US and Europe, and he has exhibited widely in the US, Europe, México, Canada, and South América.

LS: How does the Culture of War or domination of the “Empire” inform your work?

BS: My whole experience as a Native person has been that we are born political. So being born into that set of circumstances, you have no choice but to deal with it. Even if you are not an artist you have to deal with that. You have to accept that that’s part of your reality, everyday. And we all deal with politics, but our whole existence as Native people is mediated by a government, by a power. So even the fact that we’re legally considered Native, that’s determined by the government. We know ourselves who we are, how we are related by lineage, all of that, but its really the government who determines whether we are Cheyenne or not. So we either get the treaty obligations that they owe us, millions of acres of land, or we don’t, based on the governments decision. So that’s the extent of the politics in my life, so naturally that’s going to be a part of my art. What’s important to me as an artist is to seek out personal truth and to express that personal truth. And so that element, that reaction to a larger power or paternalistic power is very real for me, and very much a part of my work.
I think that in terms of the culture of war, it’s also a part of my culture and the culture of my ancestors. I’m from a culture of war, but within my culture, war has taken on a different role. It’s a number of things, it’s a way of a man gathering strength and recognition. So battles were waged and fought and the acts that you performed in those battles were what your standing was. I think that there is a difference in the way that we waged war in the old days because it was done for honor, it was done for these other reasons. A lot of times there were no deaths. There wasn’t the culture of extermination, extermination wasn’t part of the agenda, it was down the list. It was about other things first. It was about respect and honor and proving yourself. And really, the most courageous act you could do in war was to touch your enemy without killing them. And so that’s the epitome of bravery, and that’s the total other end of extermination. But all those things inform my work, all those concepts and ideas and ways of dealing with the idea of war but also how in my coping, and dealing, and surviving and thriving and flourishing as a living, Cheyenne person today- and that includes all those other things.

LS: In the face of media regulation/censorship and propaganda, how do you consider visual art/performance as a medium for expression, change, activism?

BS: Well I cant quote Guillermo Gómez-Peña exactly, but he was the first person that I performed with in an ensemble, with him and Roberto Sifuentes, and Susan Stewart and Tyler Medicinehorse and we did a piece called Mexican Cowboys and Indian Low Riders. And so that was my first experience with performance, before that it was really installation. But he mentioned, and this has become very really evident to me as I worked through performance, that in performance art and art in general, but specifically performance for some reason, you can say things and do things that you would otherwise be arrested for. And so it gives you a certain amount of freedom within the society to express things and deal directly with them and not disappear.
The power of the media today, the power of the controlled media is something, that we as everyday citizens are being fed propaganda 24 hours a day. It’ really infiltrating our ways of thinking and our ways of acting. For instance, this election that this present president stole, I really saw that when that happened, and we all knew that happened, there was this sort of helplessness. There was this hopelessness that I had never seen before in this country. Which was, “look at my vote which is supposed to be the most powerful thing we have in this country as an individual and it means nothing, it literally means nothing and so what do I do now, is it going to do any good for me to speak out?” And I saw a lot of people resigning themselves to not even dealing with the situation, but finding other ways to focus away from it- sort of in shock. And I think that the way it was played in the media, and many things now, it is pretty much propaganda, and the proliferation of control but these media sources. Who is really pulling the strings in these media sources… these are people who are more concerned about their bottom line and the effect of the news on their bottom line, in terms of profits and so they are not going to report things that are… there is a whole interlinking of industry and government, but I think that as artists it is our responsibility to speak out.
This is such an unusual time with the Patriot Act, with other legislation that has changed since 9/11, that has been in place, it’s a tenuous time as an artist. It’s the first time that I have questioned, do I speak about this or don’t I? Because with that kind of legislation you can disappear and they don’t have to justify it. And so if I disappear, is that counter-productive to the situation? And I’ve heard a lot of artists who are very vocal, very powerful and political, personal artists, questioning and saying we need to think, we need to talk about this more before we do the piece, make these gestures, and make sure that they cant use those things against us. Although we are in kind of a unique situation, as artists you work toward building up an exhibition record and more opportunities, and this and that, in a structural way you are working toward being able to express yourself. And so I think that one of the ways that I’ve realized is that fear of disappearing, of the powers-that-be coming in a taking us away, the fact that we have worked as artists, and built up some recognition. There is awareness of who we are, some more than others, if we disappear their will be an uproar, sometimes small, sometimes large, but that’s our protection. Because we have built that up, that recognition, and we are visible, we do have a responsibility. And its part of that question as well, but because of that visibility, you can’t just take the ego part of it. You have to understand that we have a role here and that that recognition is there for a reason.
Tricky times in this country. The possibilities are horrendous. I’ve never experienced this before. I just did a piece in Montana where I used the American flag in the piece. And some other objects… people were walking out of the performance, which is not unusual, based on the things I was doing with these objects and the American flag. But I was not disrespecting the American flag, I was just being honest with it. But just the mere fact that I used that flag in the piece, I didn’t even think about it when I was planning it, I was just saying what I needed to say. But I went into Canada about two weeks later and did some work and came back across the border. We got harassed and the car was searched, we were searched, we were at the border for some time. And I thought what if they found that videotape and they played it. Would that make me disappear? And that really pissed me off to have to think about that. And I drove away from the border thinking, “this went in my file.” And I kept expecting to see flashing lights behind me for about an hour… “well we found this out in our computer search, and you need to come back”… what a horrible feeling. “The land of the free, home of the brave” really, it was very disturbing. That’s where we are at now.

LS: What tools (of performance, of resistance, of assimilation, etc.) do you feel are the most useful in fighting or responding to the Empire and/or the culture of War?

BS: As performers we have many tools at our disposal, our bodies, we have our physical objects, and I think that all of those things have the potential obviously to make people aware. And I think we have to be very clear about how we are using these tools that we have, the body the mind the objects, but also words, the written word has so much power. And just in my experience as a Native person, as a Cheyenne person, I have seen the power of the word to define entire… hundreds of tribes as one thing. How incredibly powerful is that. The word and the image. Over time, if you really look back and reconstruct history… which is the other thing that we have to do, go back and reconstruct history because of what we are being taught, and what our children are being taught is propaganda.
But I think that we have to… like from my community, and other native communities, we have mobilized, as artists, curators and whatnot, we have tried to come up with a way to express ourselves in a very Native-centered way. But also looking at ourselves as the primary source of information. What it is to be a Native person. Because we have been defined so much by outside people, by anthropologists, sociologists, you name it, and literally if you go back and reconstruct history and you start to look at texts that examine why anthropology would exist, you would find that part of their early function was to prove the superiority of Westerners. To prove that Native people were a link in the evolutionary chain to what is considered a civilized human being. At the time that contact was made with this continent, and the first indigenous people were encountered, the current theories in Europe were from the Romanticists. They were talking about a time when man was one with nature, when man was simple. So the timing was perfect for that kind of thing to happen. So when they came here and saw the indigenous people, we were at that moment locked into the chain and unfortunately, still today, are locked into that spot. Which is that we are undeveloped in the mind of anthropologists. And for Western culture we have always been a tool to show the hierarchy. Once you start to reconstruct history and see those things, then you start to question. With anthropologists and people like that, I try to challenge them to go back to their beginnings of anthropology and face that. And you have to, to be an anthropologist that has clarity. I’m not saying anthropology is wrong, but the motivation sometimes is.
We have to examine the beginnings to change things. So the foundation that has been built about our identity has always been from the outside for those reasons. But also, we come from an oral tradition, so we didn’t start writing in English or any other language until well after we were on reservations. One of my elders was part of a book called Cheyenne Memories, and it’s really interesting to read the book because it’s a first person perspective. His story, his life, his telling you about his life… but the woman who edited it, she reputed almost everything he said in that book. If you read it you see John’s words and then half a page of footnotes where she says, “well this probably wasn’t true because we have proof of blah, blah…” really discounting a lot of what he said, which is a really odd, odd juxtaposition. So when I read the book I just cover up all the footnotes. One of our writers today, one of the most recognized Native writers, Vine Deloria said in an interview recently that we need to write as native people. We all need to take responsibility and write. We owe it to our survival to do that. So all those tools are powerful tools but we have to be very clear about how we use them.