Autumn Chacon
Lives in:
Albuquerque, USA
Location
- White Bay Power Station
Autumn Chacon is a Diné/Chicana activist and artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, known for her work in audio installation, electronic installation, and performance art. Her activism focuses on media justice, environmental justice, and economic justice, deeply rooted in her traditional teachings as a Diné woman. Chacon’s art often questions U.S. federal regulations and explores Indigenous futurisms, showcasing her skills as a self-taught electronics engineer. She has been instrumental in establishing three community radio stations licensed by the Federal Communications Commission and is a published essayist; her performance writing, in the form of opera has been produced in New York and Santa Fe, and is uniquely tailored for specific individuals from her community, blending her cultural heritage with contemporary issues to advocate for Indigenous Technological Liberation.
Autumn Chacon
Born 1987, Albuquerque, USA
Lives and works Albuquerque, USA Navajo nation
What Will Be Lost 2022
two-channel sound installation, looped 9:20 mins
Originally commissioned by Borealis Festival, Norway
Courtesy of the artist and Borealis Festival
What Will Be Lost is developed through artist Autumn Chacon’s activist relationship with the Sámi People and other Indigenous resistances, created in collaboration with Sámi activist and artist Sandra Márjá West. The sound installation unfolds through simultaneous audio tracks that shift in relation to the listener’s position in space. One channel presents a spoken letter addressed to Aurubis, a multinational copper extraction company operating on Sámi land; the other carries environmental recordings from the region itself.
As these sounds overlap, interrupt, and merge, the work stages a sonic negotiation between extractive industry and living landscape. Chacon foregrounds listening as an ethical act, revealing how multiple presences – corporate, ecological, human – coexist within the same contested terrain. By situating this work within the exhibition, the artist mobilises sound as both witness and address, amplifying Indigenous land-based knowledge while confronting the global systems that continue to shape its loss.