Artist Statement

According to UNESCO, more than 2,400 languages in the world are in danger of extinction. With 954 endangered indigenous languages existing in the Americas this issue is of particular importance to the American continent.
CLS attempts to engage the urban population of the Americas to ponder how a relationship with indigenous languages can contribute to ecological, environmental, and cultural knowledge. CLS is a multimedia interactive space where endangered indigenous language is alive. The public is invited to enter the space and experience the endangered language. The experience is recorded in real time and can be inserted into the world wide digital vain from the CLS via social media and or email. Orthography derived from the language of Tewa was used in the creation of this installation.
This project is a collaborative piece with Tewa Women United Grandmothers Circle and the Tewa Woman United (TWU) organization. TWU is a collective inter-tribal women’s voice in the Tewa homelands of Northern New Mexico.

• Matthew Garcia, USA. As an interdisciplinary artist Matt Garcia maintains a socially engaged practice exploring the intersection of new media, place and community. Garcia’s research practice investigates endangered ecology, its relationship to disappearing knowledge systems and how technology can connect communities to a reclaiming or re-imagining of a lost epistemology. Garcia’s art and research practice utilize a spectrum of expression tools: performance, digital media, web, installation, video and even food practice. His work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues such as: The International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA), the European Research Network Sociology of the Arts (Vienna, Austria), Balance-Unbalance Festival (Queensland, Australia), Open Engagement (Portland State University), HASTAC (Lima, Peru), The National Hispanic Cultural Center (ABQ,USA), SpaceRE:solutions -IG Bildende Kunst Gallery (Vienna, Austria). His work was included in – Space RE:solutions – a edited book produced by Transcript, exploring visual culture research and artist intervention. Matthew Garcia is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital/New Media at Kansas State University, USA.