The Wisconsin Project: Found: Indian Bowl, Lac du Flambeau, WI

5.12.13

Found: Indian Bowl, Lac du Flambeau, WI

Found: Indian Bowl, Lac du Flambeau, Wis.
Made by Dexter, West Nyack, NY. Published by Wyman Post Card Co., Wausau, circa 1951

In his 2003 essay Simulating Culture: Being Indian for Tourists in Lac du Flambeau's Wa-Swa-Gon Indian Bowl, anthropologist Larry Nesper wrote that "After the Second World War, increasing numbers of tourists traveled to the Northwoods of Wisconsin to recreate. Lac du Flambeau Chippewa Indians encouraged this process by availing themselves as fishing guides and by building in 1951 the Indian Bowl, within which they staged Indian dances and related cultural performances." Nesper goes on to argue that a simulacrum of Indian culture in the Northwoods was produced. Today this roadside attraction, illustrated with a photograph from the road showing a brand spanking new 1951 Cadillac parked out front, is now in peril and needs support. Organizers of a restoration effort no longer criticize crass tourism, but acknowledge its importance and that tourism dollars are key to preserving the historic Indian Bowl and outdoor amphitheater. The Indian Bowl facility hosted Pow Wows, Ojibwe dance, and cultural events for decades. The plan it to create a unified multicultural native arts center to be known as the Lac du Flambeau Cultural and Performing Arts Center with a mission to preserve and showcase native culture and heritage.

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THE WISCONSIN PROJECT

Our research-driven Wisconsin Project contemplates the rooted-ness and state-of-mind resulting from inhabiting a single place, our native Wisconsin, for a long time. Through critiquing postcard views both made and found, we learn a great deal about past and present Wisconsin. We began making postcard views of the places immediately around our studio and on our drives around Wisconsin in about 2008. We use the vintage postcard film format and print the cards in palladium and cyanotype. By communicating details of a specific place, seeming to register only marginally on the national radar, the project seeks to bring audiences into a Wisconsin mental space. Some in the art world would argue that the Midwest, particularly Wisconsin, makes for banal “fly over” subject matter. Our project challenges that by finding meaning in the ordinary and inviting audiences to examine, dialog, and reflect on the particular emotional quality of the idiosyncrasies of place and the perceptions of those both inside and outside of it. Sometimes distant memories are involved and a longing for a time now gone. Wisconsin’s glacier inflected landscape and proximity to the Great Lakes creates an exotic arena for living that informs our project. The life cycle plays out and rural and urban ruins serve as monuments to existences as people, places, and ideas surface then vanish. Ultimately, we aim to grapple with complex perceptions of Wisconsin ranging from nostalgic, romantic, and idealized--as depicted on myriad real photo postcard and standard tourist postcards--to mysterious, dark, and Gothic as conveyed in works of art and literature such as Michael Lesy's "Wisconsin Death Trip" book and Werner Herzog's "Stroszek" film. The project culminated in a residency with workshops and community collaborations and the installation "We Go From Where We Know" at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center 10.13.2013-3.7.2014 and later the Harvestore Bandshell for Fermentation Fest in 10.2014. The blog continues the exploration of postcards.