November 21-26
VIDEO INSTALLATION
Curios and Other Trinkets
2001 7:00
Stephen Foster
Initially starting out as a single channel video project based on the infamous postcard depicting Chief Red Cloud shaking hands with a Member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police the artist wanted to expand the possibilities of an implied relationship between the two men shaking hands in the postcard. As icons they are cultural symbols that refer to the Nation State of Canada and their relationship with the First Nations of North America. From the original postcard we are obviously meant to conclude that this relationship has been an amicable one, but the reality in the past or even recently is not the case. The three monitor installation constructs scenes that symbolically represent the view of an individual walking down a long corridor, which may be thought of as a history itself. However, this is a reconstructed history and not a natural history. Science through ethnology as played a role in defining the stereotypes of Indianness and those definitions have been used by bureaucracies and the Canadian State to justify their policies toward Aboriginal People. The centre monitor represents this to us in the image of E.S. Curtis (an ethnographer concerned with the documentation of an idealized Native people) postcards and their mimicry. The side monitors can be seen as rooms that one looks into as they pass through the hallway. In each room we find the Mountie and the Chief playing out different roles of historical significance in the relationship of Canada to First Nations people, as well they may also reflect current relationships between the police and individuals of First Nations decent. As one looks from the left side monitor to the right one notices that the role of the Mountie and Chief are reversed this is meant to indicate a more dynamic and deeper relationship than the simple stereotypes might otherwise suggest.
VIDEO INSTALLATION
Facets and Faces
2002 3:00min
Edgar Endress
This video installation portrays indigenous musicians of the indigenous Wayuu community in Guajira, northern Columbia. The culture of the people of Guajira is maintained through strong oral tradition. Music is an integral component of the social fabric of Guajira. It is multi-faceted means of communicating tradition in this mostly non-literate society. This installation is composed of three channels which, together, create a collage of imagery and sound. This collage expresses the identity of the community that is (re)presented by oral tradition.
Mary Kunuk
Enuki Kunuk
Richard Ben Kunuk
Michelle Nangmalik Kunuk
Jayson Qajaaq Kunnuk
Krista Uttak
Marie-Helene Cousineau
Katarina Soukup
With the aid of the latest satellite telephone and mobile computing technologies, Arnait Video Productions has created a dynamic website which will permit a small team of Inuit and Quebecois participants at a remote outpost camp on Baffin Island to create a daily journal of their experiences, tell oral histories, host special events, and interact with the outside world via the Internet in August 2001.
During summer 2000, an Arnait Video Productions crew filmed the daily life and the stories of the Kunuk family for a documentary video entitled Anana (Mother). This program is being produced with the support of APTN, Telefilm Canada, and the Canada Council for the Arts, and will be released in August 2001.
Live from the Tundra jumps off where Anana left off, and allows internauts around the world to visit the Kunuk family at their outpost camp and learn about a culture and a lifestyle that is known to very few people on the planet. Not many people in Canada, or in the world for that matter, posses the knowledge, skills and experiences that Vivi and Enuki Kunuk have cultivated in the unique environment of Canada's Eastern Arctic.
Inuit culture is profoundly tied to the land of its people: the stories and knowledge Vivi and Enuki Kunuk possess are completely unique to this region. The land -the tundra - is- is the source of Inuit people's stories and history. Yet in their deep humanity, these stories are infused with universality.
Unlike government institutions which are currently converging in Nunavut's capital Iqaluit, media producers in Igloolik can and want to maintain their presence on the land. They want to explore the creative possibilities of nomadic living, all while employing sophisticated communication technologies to remain wired to the 21st century.
Living and travelling on the land, project participants will carrying out media work from the Nomadic Media Lab, a portable, insulated dome tent located at the Kunuk family's summer outpost camp.
Every day for 5 days in August, the site will stream stream fresh audio and video culled from life on the land under the glorious midnight sun, as well as a journal and photographs about the experience.
The site will enable visitors to the website to follow the Kunuk family in its nomadic rhythms of hunting, travelling and camping. Special guests - singers, videomakers, sculptors - will also visit the camp to participate in performances and discussions which will be streamed to the Live from the Tundra website.
Until then, explore the locations around Igloolik in which the Anana documentary and the Live from the Tundra project take place.
