Electric Beads: On Indigenous Digital Formalism

This essay considers whether Indigenous artists employ digital media differently than do non‐Indigenous artists. The article distinguishes works that are illusions that users wittingly pass through to engage the content, and sticky works in which users are encouraged to get caught up in the pleasures of the form. Through readings of the beading animations of Jon Corbett (Métis) and the sound art of Raven Chacon (Navajo), I propose that when they are expressing themselves as Indigenous, Indigenous artists always make representational work, however abstract or experimental. They refer to kinship and history, relations with the land, and the metaphysical.