Coil Mound Fundraiser for Indigenous Futurity
Tax deductible
Join me in raising money for the American Indian Center- Chicago and 4000N to complete the Coil Mound Project at Horner Park. The Coil Mound is an earthwork designed by artist Santiago X, an acclaimed Indigenous futurist who aims to reinvigorate the ancestral mound building practice of his Koasati people.
More About the installation:
The Coil Mound is a celebration of the connection between the peoples and the waterways of the Chicagoland area. The placement of the mound, on the western banks of the Chicago River, is a deliberate choice to help demonstrate this connection, while inviting the visitors to participate in the relationship of people to the water.
As one of the primary goals of this installation, the activation of the chosen site connects to the river as a key design element. The regional Indigenous community has a storied past and thriving contemporary culture centered on connections to our waterways. The reintroduction of Indigenous mound-building taking place in contemporary culture with a resounding precedent of its presence here in the Midwest calls for the necessity of embedded educational components.
Often the only notions of residual Indigenous culture are tropes of ancient histories, artifacts lacking context, and misrepresentation within a commercial culture like the presence of racist mascotry. The educational components of this site utilize digital artifacts to transcend these tropes of the archaeological object often associated with Indigenous mounds.
In lieu of the physical artifact, the mound will be embedded with augmented reality hotspots that users can access via their phones or tablets. This digital augmentation will pull up the cultural context in the form of websites, 3d models, videos, or interactions that will immerse the encounter beyond the physical and give the user the opportunity to contribute to the story of these earthworks.
“It’s not nostalgia or replication; it’s about being able to innovate on our own land again, which gets to the heart of what it means to be an Indigenous Futurist.” Santiago X (2019)
More About the installation:
The Coil Mound is a celebration of the connection between the peoples and the waterways of the Chicagoland area. The placement of the mound, on the western banks of the Chicago River, is a deliberate choice to help demonstrate this connection, while inviting the visitors to participate in the relationship of people to the water.
As one of the primary goals of this installation, the activation of the chosen site connects to the river as a key design element. The regional Indigenous community has a storied past and thriving contemporary culture centered on connections to our waterways. The reintroduction of Indigenous mound-building taking place in contemporary culture with a resounding precedent of its presence here in the Midwest calls for the necessity of embedded educational components.
Often the only notions of residual Indigenous culture are tropes of ancient histories, artifacts lacking context, and misrepresentation within a commercial culture like the presence of racist mascotry. The educational components of this site utilize digital artifacts to transcend these tropes of the archaeological object often associated with Indigenous mounds.
In lieu of the physical artifact, the mound will be embedded with augmented reality hotspots that users can access via their phones or tablets. This digital augmentation will pull up the cultural context in the form of websites, 3d models, videos, or interactions that will immerse the encounter beyond the physical and give the user the opportunity to contribute to the story of these earthworks.
“It’s not nostalgia or replication; it’s about being able to innovate on our own land again, which gets to the heart of what it means to be an Indigenous Futurist.” Santiago X (2019)
Organizer
Fawn Pochel
Organizer
Chicago, IL
American Indian Center, Inc. (Aic)
Registered nonprofit
Donations are typically 100% tax deductible in the US.
