ROBOTSMOSTLY
New water feature, built by users
Santa Fe artists/activists Ehren Kee Natay and Dylan Tenorio want to gather post-obelisk data through Minecraft
The Plaza Bandstand (where bands stand)
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ALEX DE VORE a l e x @ s f r e p o r t e r. c o m
Former obelisk; currently DJ booth and dance floor
A bird’s eye view of the Minecraft version of Santa Fe’s Plaza. Natay and Tenorio built surrounding areas as well, including a pueblo-like structure beneath the city streets.
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JANUARY 26-FEBRUARY 1, 2022
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SFREPORTER.COM
n late 2019, after years lying dormant, SFR attempted to relaunch our legendary 3-Minute Film Fest. It seemed a promising affair, too, with dozens more submissions from local filmmakers than we ever thought possible, plus judges like filmmaker and Three Sisters Collective co-founder Autumn Billie (Diné) and Emmy-winning documentarian Kaela Waldstein of Mountain Mover Media. Then, as we’re all so sick of reading, the pandemic happened, forcing us to delay the fest through all of 2020 and most of 2021. The filmmakers were, how to put this—kind of bummed. But in the end, we managed to cobble together an in-person event at the Center for Contemporary Arts mere days before the new year where, to a sold out house, we presented nearly 90 minutes of funny, strange, clever or otherwise all-too-real films clocking in at three minutes or under. We were also proud to crown a film dubbed Minecraft Santa Fe as the winner.
The movie from Ehren Kee Natay and Dylan Tenorio (both Kewa Pueblo and Diné) was produced through local nonprofit Littleglobe for its Littleglobe TV series and takes place entirely within the video game Minecraft, a pixelated and adorable building sim wherein anyone with enough patience can create any type of world they wish. Across the globe, users have built everything from Studio Ghibli’s iconic worlds and The Simpsons’ Springfield to the Titanic, Notre Dame and—well, if you can think of something, it probably exists in Minecraft. Natay and Tenorio set their sights admittedly a little smaller, creating a version of the Santa Fe Plaza and its surrounding areas, replete with the Palace Avenue clock, Frito pies at the Five & Dime, the bandstand shelter and, as a bit of an easter egg, a pueblo-like structure hidden beneath what would be Water Street. They also included the obelisk. Now, every Santa Fean knows activists tore the monument down on Oct. 20, 2020, Indigenous Peoples Day, née Columbus Day in Santa Fe (and other more forward-thinking communities around the country), but the purpose of including the once-erect stone slabs in their film is part of a more intensive would-be project from Natay and Tenorio through which they hope to engage local youths and/or classrooms in discussions about the future of our fair city. The film includes numerous young gamers excitedly rushing their avatars around the Plaza to identify the spaces and places they know. When they eventually come to the obelisk, they discuss its demise and plan together: First they transform the thing into a water fountain. Then,
