The "First Literature Project" Opens At Guild Hall, by Hayground Alumni Wunetu Wequai Tarrant and Christian Scheider
Opening Sunday, May 19th, in the Marks Family Gallery South at Guild Hall, East Hampton. More Details here.
First Literature Project proposes to support Native nations in their efforts to maintain and further their languages, narratives, and oral traditions. Employing a new immersive storytelling platform, 3D video is mixed with virtual reality to re-create the timeless experience of sitting face-to-face with a storyteller.
First Literature Project utilizes the newly released Apple Vision Pro headset to present the immersive experience Padawe, developed over a two-year period by Guild Hall Community Artists-in-Residence Wunetu Wequai Tarrant and Christian Scheider. The exhibition also features video works by the Shinnecock language revitalization collective Ayim Kutoowonk and interviews with members of the Shinnecock Nation.
Timed entry is required to experience First Literature Project’s virtual-reality work. Admission is free. Patrons who wear glasses or corrective lenses are strongly encouraged to wear contact lenses.
Organized by Anthony Madonna, Guild Hall Patti Kenner Director of Learning + New Works.
Wunetu Wequai Tarrant is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation, located on the East End of Long Island, NY. She grew up with her family on the Shinnecock reservation peninsula. Wunetu has been inspired by her grandmother and matriarch of the ThunderBird clan, Elizabeth ‘Chee Chee’ ThunderBird Haile, to promote cultural preservation and education. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Alfred University in 2011, a Masters of Native American Linguistics and Languages from the University of Arizona 2020 and is currently a Linguistics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Arizona focusing on the reconstruction and revitalization of the Shinnecock dialect of Southern New England Algonquian.
Wunetu has worked closely with the Algonquian Language Revitalization Project on designing curriculum and activities for teaching Shinnecock and related dialects and continues to research best practices in language research and production of materials that will be accessible to community members and teachers regardless of linguistic education experience. She has continued to advocate for Indigenous students as the Julia & Bernard Bloch fellow (2019-2022) and special interest groups through the Linguistic Society of America.
Wunetu is a 2022 – 2024 Guild Hall Community Artist-in-Residence (CAiR). With support from the competitive Creatives Rebuild New York grant, Wunetu and filmmaker, Christian Scheider will spend the next two years developing the First Literature Project (FLP) work. The FLP aims to support the preservation of Indigenous stories, culture, and language by utilizing immersive 3D, VR, and holographic technology to create two immersive orations to be exhibited at Guild Hall in Spring 2024. Additionally, another component of this project will include a compilation of all materials utilized to help with Shinnecock language research to create a centralized database that will help with future research, as well as a video archive for the Padoquohan Medicine Lodge to document the interviews with Shinnecock Tribal members.
Christian Scheider is an independent filmmaker and theatermaker living between New York City and the East End of Long Island. In addition to his original film and theater work, Scheider heads video production for The Sunny Center in Ireland, the world’s only post-exoneration residential community, and produces films for the Bard Prison Initiative, his alma mater. As a theatermaker, Scheider co-adapted, produced, and directed Ray Bradbury’s short story, The Murderer, and Kurt Vonnegut’s novel, Galápagos into fully staged productions, and premiered with his collaborators an original slapstick comedy, The Summit.
For film, Scheider has produced and directed the documentary The Sunny Center about death row exonerees, and co-produced and directed the documentary The Tree Prophet about a self-identified climate prophet, which won the Audience Award at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival. Scheider is in perpetual pre-production on the quixotic feature comedy film Animal Party about human-animal rituals all over the world, the original screenplay for which was honored by the Redford Center as part of their 2016 grants program. Scheider is currently writing and producing a limited series, Pullman, about the eponymous railroad baron and the epochal national labor uprising of 1894.