"Between 2023 and 2024, four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California were blown up with dynamite after generations-long activism from Indigenous communities. This landmark moment in the fight against injustice for tribes including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath, and Hoopa, and the Shasta Indian Nation, forms part of Lucy Raven's dramatic video installation, Murderers Bar (2025), which has its European première in The Curve at the Barbican."
"As Shanay Jhaveri, the Barbican's head of visual arts, explains, the dam in the film, called Copco No. 1, was built in 1918. "It caused a huge detrimental impact to local ecosystems inhabiting the river, especially its salmon population, which was of great spiritual, cultural and nutritional value to the Indigenous people who lived across and alongside the river." There are no overt references in Raven's film to the communities' activism."
Four dams on the Klamath River in Oregon and California were dynamited between 2023 and 2024 following generations-long Indigenous activism. The removals involved tribes including the Yurok, Karuk, Klamath, Hoopa and the Shasta Indian Nation and addressed deep ecological and cultural harms. Copco No. 1, built in 1918, severely disrupted river ecosystems and salmon populations central to Indigenous spiritual, cultural and nutritional life. Murderers Bar (2025), a video installation by Lucy Raven, stages the laying and detonation of dynamite at Copco No. 1 and follows the subsequent release, tracking water and sediment. The piece is the final film in a trilogy, The Drumfire, framed around pressure and states of material change, and was informed by research and consultation with the affected tribes.
Read at The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]