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Join Us VENICE — The air was full of energy outside Jeffrey Gibson’s (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee) United States Pavilion at the Venice Biennale on Saturday, October 26, after White People Killed Them finished their performance. Raven Chacon (Diné) played a keyboard synth, pitch shifter, and distortion pedals, as well as vocalized and used a loop cassette player, while John Dieterich played the electric guitar at the base of Gibson’s bright-red sculpture comprising empty plinths and pedestals titled “the space in which to place me,” sharing a name with the exhibition itself. Marshall Trammell played a drumset on top of the interactive sculpture’s front pedestal, performing with such passion that his bass drum kept sliding toward the edge of the pedestal.
Near the end of the performance, Gibson rose from his seat in the audience and retied a cement block placed on the base of the drum to prevent it from crashing down. Afterward, sev.