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Paul Schmelzer

Editor | Writer | Digital Strategist
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Postcommodity, Repellent Fence, 2015

Postcommodity, Repellent Fence, 2015

Postcommodity's timely meditation on borders, indigeneity, and the waning white majority (walkerart.org)

October 1, 2017

Before Postcommodity showed at documenta 14 and the 2017 Venice Biennale and before they won the $75K Ford Foundation Art of Change fellowship, I invited the indigenous art collective to pen an Artist Op-Ed, the eleventh in the Walker's ongoing series. Their powerful and poetic contribution: a mix of poetry, linguistic education, and history meditating on 2043, the year the US Census predicts whites will become a minority in the United States. Following the essay's online release, we celebrated the publication of their op-ed pamphlet at a well-received March 10 artist talk, which I moderated.

Following the artist talk, Anishinaabe novelist Louise Erdrich, in the audience that night, agreed to write for Walker Reader about Postcommodity's documenta installation, which used the LRAD acoustic weaponry used on protesters at Standing Rock for more healing ends. In October 2017, the collective iterated upon their Walker op-ed in the pages of Art in America. 

The project marks a Walker Art Center first: it's the first time a publishing project has led to acquisition and exhibition of an artist's work—a balloon from the collective's Repellent Fence (2015) project is on view in the 2017–2018 exhibition, I am you, you are too. 

In editorial strategy, appearances Tags Postcommodity, Walker Art Center
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