On June 10, 2020, under cover of night, a monument to Christopher Columbus was anonymously beheaded in Boston Harbor. Hours later, protestors led by American Indian Movement activist Mike Forcia (Bad River Anishinaabe) toppled a Columbus statue on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. Direct action against settler colonialism uncoiling in the wake of George Floyd’s murder connected a critical circuit of solidarity and resources between the Movement for Black Lives and the ongoing Indigenous insurgency against the sovereignty of the US. LUCID DECAPITATION conducts the energy of these acts of destruction into film form, documenting, dramatizing, and speculating around the histories that animated them through the rhetoric and conventions of Hindu mythological cinema. The work searches for relationality in Columbus’ geographic confusion – a founding misrecognition of Caribbean Natives as Indians – a confusion that Brown people live in the crosshairs of to this day. Produced in collaboration with Mike Forcia and an ensemble of Twin Cities-based musicians, dancers, media workers, and activists, LUCID DECAPITATION braids Indigenous prophecy, Black music, and mythological film to challenge the colonial monument’s claim on space and time. It is a call to loving destruction, to mourn, renew, and re-enchant the world; to turn away from the pedestal and towards one another.
LUCID DECAPITATION is supported by a 2022 Creative Capital Award
