DAY 3

Wednesday 5. June 209, Castren Hal, in the University of Lapland

Theme: Research Findings & Reformed Questions on Arctic Arts and Culture

10:10-10:25

Amy Prouty, « Of the South: Urban Inuit Artists, Placemaking, and the (Re)mapping of Colonial Geographies » (paper)

Inuit art has a long, complicated history with Canadian nationalism, a constructed identity which relies on romantic imaginings of the Arctic and ascribed qualities of “Northerness” to function. This uneasy relationship continues to inform various North-South binaries which dominate the canon of Inuit art despite having little resemblance to past or present-day realities. These binaries remain largely unchallenged in part because little to no attention has been paid to the discursive formations of place within the literature, even as many scholars recognize the importance of the Arctic landscape in the discourses surrounding Inuit art. My paper intends to interrogate the role of place in the canon of Inuit art history by examining the practice of urban Inuit artists working within Canadian metropoles such as Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. I argue that these urban artists are utilizing art to create temporary sites for community-building within cities which allow for the expression and transmission of Inuit cultural values. These practices form a part of a larger project of (re)mapping colonial notions surrounding place, identity, and even the category of art itself in order to hold space for Inuit and their worldviews within urban spaces that are frequently alienating and hostile.

Amy Prouty is an emerging curator and doctoral student in the Art History program at Concordia University. Her research focuses on the practice of urban Inuit artists and the role of art in community-building for Inuit diasporas. Amy holds a BA and an MA in Art History, both from Carleton University. Her writing has been featured in Inuit Art Quarterly and esse arts + opinions. Recently, she co-curated an exhibition of contemporary circumpolar art, Among All These Tundras, with Heather Igloliorte and Charissa Von Harringa.

10:25-10:40

Jan Borm, « “Cultural perception of the Arctic environment and societies: some internal and external perspectives” » (paper)

The circumpolar regions of the North have been perceived in diverse and often conflicting ways. In Antiquity, the Arctic was considered the homeland of the Hyperboreans, a happy people regularly receiving Apollo in quest of renewed energy. During the Renaissance, the regions just below the pole were still looked at as a place of “greatest dignitie” before European explorers started drawing a more gruesome picture, composed of eternal ice, low temperatures and emptiness, admittedly sublime to some. In more recent times, a friendlier portrait of the Arctic has appeared, increasingly reflecting indigenous voices up to the point of claiming « the right to be cold. » This presentation will focus on internal and external perceptions of the Arctic and ongoing change.

Jan Borm is Full Professor in British Literature and Vice-President in charge of International Relations at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) where he also co-directs the international interdisciplinary Masters 2 programme “Arctic Studies” affiliated with the excellence cluster “University of Paris-Saclay”. He has published widely on travel literature and Arctic travel writing in English, French and German, including a portrait of the French anthropo-geographer Jean Malaurie (Paris: editions du Chêne, 2005). He has co-edited ten collective volumes, including, most recently, Le froid. Adaptation, production, effets, représentations. Montréal : Presses de l’Université du Québec, coll. “Droit au Pôle”, 2018 and is scientific coordinator of the UVSQ team in the H2020 project EDU-ARCTIC.

10:40-10:50

Anniina Koivurova, « Punctum in a child's drawing from 1947 Lapland. Reading close one image » (visual)

In my presentation I will interpret one drawing that is part of a bigger collection (located in Provincial Museum of Lapland). How does one image represent the context of the time and place it has been created in? I ponder how does one image represent the whole collection and even though this image can be seen as a key picture, why it is not enough.

Anniina Koivurova is a D.A. in Art and Design, art education. In her current work she teaches upper secondary comprehensive school art pedagogics, history and paradigms of art education, museum pedagogics and holds bachelor and master studies seminars. Previously she has worked as a lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Visual Culture Studies (Faculty of Art and Design) and Arktikum Science Centre. During recent years her research work has concentrated on children’s drawings, watercolour paintings and paper collages from the years 1946 and 1947. The images reveal cultural-historical, societal and social knowledge of the world that the children of that time lived in, including the values and norms of school education and ethos of the era.  Anniina studied in her doctoral thesis "Drawing the line. Accepted and rejected pictures in the social space of the art lesson" (2010, in Finnish) the explicit and implicit power, responsibility, restrictions and possibilities of Finnish comprehensive school art education as part of building up the identity and world view of young people. She collected her material using modified empathy-based method. The thesis provides information about students’ conceptions of art and education and of art lessons as a learning situation. Her artistic practice includes working both with big unities and intricate details. Colourful aquarelles are typical. She likes to experiment with materials in a kind of play: freeform crochet and ready-made objects and paintings with make-up products. Her artwork often refers to the fleeting as well as timeless nature of life.

10:50-11:20    Discussion & Brake

11:20-11:35

Silvia Colombo, « Multiple voices, multiple places: about "spontaneous museums" in Norrbotten "Finding a way to recognise, communicate and share traditional practices within non-institutional collections" » (paper)

Norrbotten is a vast region located in Northern Sweden that, nowadays, preserves a cultural heritage which is both tangible and intangible. Spread in the whole geographic area, it lays not just in ´official´ museums and institutions and its cultural interest is not systematically recognised. A lot of ´non-institutional´ places and collections are actually contributing to shape the cultural identity (identities) of the region, preserving and sharing its history and traditions. Given this context, the study aims to focus on alternative cultural circuits based on ´pop-up´ museums and exhibition places, founded by common (non-professional) people interested in collecting ´typical´ objects. Overall, they preserve habits, crafts and local stories able to depict the personal interests of their founders, but also to transmit collective stories and document cultural processes mainly pertaining to the past.  While the mapping-part has just started, locating and studying some cases such as the Traktormuseum in Överkalix, the Myggmuseet in Gällivare or the Bensinmuseet in Älvsbyn, the next step is still waiting. In order to give them easy accessibility and to publicly share their heritage, it would be interesting connecting those (non)institutions in a network which should be accessible both physically and digitally. A network that can be potentially extended and enriched with other places, other stories, other people.

Silvia Colombo, art historian and museum specialist, holds a PhD in Conservation of Architectural Heritage at Politecnico di Milano, where she still is guest lecturer. After a collaboration with the University of Manchester as art consultant, she is currently working at Norrbottens Museum in Luleå (Sweden). She is also involved within the project "Swedish Lapland AiR" run by ArtNorth (Resurscentrum för konst), Luleå. Freelance editor and art critic, she writes for publishing houses and art journals.

11:35-11:50

José Babin, « Provoking artistic meetings around the Circle » (paper)

Since 2015, I have been working on a circumpolar project called « Nordicité, walking on the circle ». This 5 years cycle was the occasion to create several artistic works. Among them :  2 theater plays (Nordicité and Lovestar) and 2 short movies ( Fish Hole and Silence). These artistic works were inspired by the desire to provoke encounters between artists from different nordic cultures. Through Théâtre Incliné’s circumpolar cycle, artists from Canada, Finland, Norway, Russia and Iceland worked together on different territories. I believe that true artistic collaborations have to begin with in situ residencies, giving time for the artists to meet and work together on a free level.  I would like to present those experiences and open the door for new collaborations. You can see more about the cycle « Nordicité, walking on the circle » on a special web platform  * CLIC ON THE PICTURES TO SEE WHAT HAPPEND IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES : http://theatreincline.ca/nordicite/en/

And more on the on going project here : http://theatreincline.ca/nordicite/en/islande.php
 
José Babin, the artistic director of the Quebec company Théâtre Incliné, creates visual theater that merges light, music, bodies, and unanimated matter. A theater where the spectator assembles all the different parts together. Both stage director and actress, she explores playwriting through the imagery of scenic writing, working on productions with or without words. Her artistic approach is based on stage writing that uses "matter" to express feelings. She has developed a unique manipulation style that allies mime and puppetry. In her form of theater, part of the story being written comes from within the actors, through all of the visuals and sounds that interact with them. For Jose Babin, every new project emerges from an impulse that takes place in different inspiring territories. www.theatreincline.ca

11:50-12:20  discussion

13:30pm-13:45pm,

Ásthildur Jónsdóttir, Iceland Introduction

, 

13:45-14:00

Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, A Journey to What Matters: Increased Alaska Native Art & Culture

Through the A Journey to What Matters Increased Alaska Native ART & Culture (JWM) program The CIRI Foundation partners with tribal organizations and museums in Alaska to develop community-based arts programs and projects that support Alaska Native curatorial interventions in museums. This presentation will share information about the successes of the JWM program including efforts to revitalize and document distinctive Alaska Native art traditions, while growing Alaska's indigenous arts leadership in rural communities.

Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi is an art historian, museum consultant and program officer whose research focuses on the revival of Alaska Native arts. She is based in Homer, Alaska and is an independent scholar.

14:00-14:15

Osmo Pekonen, François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882), a pioneer of Arctic painting

François-Auguste Biard (1799-1882) was a painter of the French Navy who kept dreaming about exotic countries and distant shores. He first visited the Levant, painting scenes in an Orientalistic mood, then turned his attention to the Arctic. Even before having visited any Northern country, he painted imaginary scenes with polar bears and walruses. In 1839 he got an opportunity to visit Northern Norway, the Bear Island and Svalbard aboard La Recherche, a corvette of the French Navy exploring the Arctic Ocean. On his return journey, in September 1839, he crossed Lapland following a trail from Hammerfest to Tornio. He was the first internationally renowned artist to produce ethnographically accurate pictures of the Sámi. Louis Philippe, the King of the French who ruled 1830-1848, had followed the same route as a young Duke of Orléans 44 years earlier while fleeing the French revolution. Therefore, the King had commissioned from Biard paintings illustrating his youthful adventures in Lapland. The resulting large canvases, nowadays preserved in Versailles, were on display in a major exhibition devoted to Biard in Rovaniemi in 2017. A touch of Orientalism can be detected even in his Lapland paintings.

Osmo Pekonen, Ph.D., D.Soc.Sci,, born in 1960, is a Docent of Cultural History at the University of Lapland. He has published numerous papers and  books (in Finnish, Swedish, French, and English) on the early explorers of Lapland such as Olaus Magnus (in Lapland in 1519), Jean-François Regnard (1681), Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1736-1737), the Duke of Orléans (1795), Sir Arthur de Capell Brooke (1820), Xavier Marmier (1838 & 1839), François-Auguste Biard (1839) and Prince Roland Bonaparte (1884). Osmo Pekonen is a corresponding member of four French academies: Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Caen (founded in 1652), Académie des sciences, belles-lettres et arts de Besançon et de Franche-Comté (founded in 1752), Académie d'Orléans (founded in 1809) and Académie européenne des sciences, des arts et des lettres (founded in 1979). In 2012, he was awarded the Prix Chaix d'Est-Ange of the Académie des sciences morales et politiques in the field of history. His total publishing record includes 39 books and 800+ papers (including the non-refereed ones), many of them on Arctic topics.

14:15-14:30 Questions and discussions

14:30-14:45

Paul Landon, Lost in the Barrens: The Northern Landscape as a Cinema of Nowhere

In 1970 the Canadian visual artist and filmmaker Michael Snow shot La Région Centrale on a hilltop in a remote location in northern Québec. Snow chose to film in a treeless barren landscape to realise a classic of experimental cinema, a choreography of earth and sky, what the critic Dominique Noguez would refer to as a « A powerfully elaborated celebration of a universe without man. » La Région Centrale is a keywork in a larger practice of moving image art that makes use of the northern landscape as a site devoid of meaning, a modern reverie seemingly unmarked by history and existing beyond the constraints of language and intent.

Paul Landon is a professor at the École des arts visuels et médiatiques of UQÀM. Landon graduated from NSCAD in Canada in 1984. He completed a graduate programme the Jan van Eyck Academie in The Netherlands in 1989. In 2016, Landon was awarded a Doctorate in Fine Arts from the University of the Arts Helsinki. Landon is a visual and media artist who explores landscape and built space using experimental processes of mediatisation. His work is structured through the uncompromising physicality of modern architecture and landscape. Landon is a founding member of the Hexagram institute for art and media and has collaborated in the research project Nouvelles formes narratives et création audio-vidéo and in the Elastic Spaces research group.

14:45-15:00

Valgerður Hauksdóttir, Health and environmentally safer methods in visual arts with focus on non-toxic printmaking

This research covers a broad area focusing on health and environmentally safer methods in visual arts with emphasis on fine art printmaking where there is a long history of using toxic methods and materials in the process. Artists have died as a result of using unsafe materials when creating artworks. Knowledge has been forthcoming regarding what dangers are to be avoided, not just for the health of artists but for the environment as well. Despite growing awareness regarding the use of safer methods amongst artists and educators of art the access to new information and application of new knowledge is both confusing and inconsistent. This research analyses the safety of the traditionally applied methods for health and the environment and to what degree the ‘non-toxic’- categorized methods are safer. The aim is to explore possibilities and find improved solutions both on an individual level and in the social context. It is important not to die because of your art and it is our responsibility to teach safe methods in fine art. This is critical for the education of students of all age groups and levels studying creative arts, and for the practicing artists.

Valgerdur Hauksdottir holds an MFA degree in fine art printmaking and has been professionally active as an artist/printmaker and educator of printmaking for over 30 years. She is the founder and director of the organization VIA-art Ltd. (www.via-art.com), focusing on research in non-toxic and sustainable methods in fine art printmaking. Previous engagements include serving as the Head of Printmaking and Vice Principle of the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts (now the Visual Art Department at the Iceland Art Academy). Hauksdottir has been a guest lecturer/artist at several art institutions in the past, the latest one as a visiting professor in printmaking at the University of Indiana, Bloomington. Hauksdottir’s works have been exhibited widely and received international recognition.

15:00-15:15

Pia Lindman, Subsensorial and cultural heritage

The artistic and doctoral research by Pia Lindman navigates the complex and intersecting pathways of Finnish oral tradition (sometimes titled Kalevala), the recent establishment of a bone setting technique and teaching based on Finnish oral tradition and titled "Kalevalainen jäsenkorjaus", and finally, Lindman's personal performance art practice of healing and painting (while also a student of "Kalevalainen jäsenkorjaus"). In this paper, while cognizant of living cultures in process, Lindman poses critical questions regarding politically and/or economically motivated erasures of cultures and traditions. Finally she asks what art can or should do?

From 2013 to 2018 (August), Professor of Environmental Art at Aalto University Pia Lindman received her second Master degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A. in 1999. After ten years of residing in New York, a professorship at Yale University School of Art, and a research fellowship at M.I.T., she now builds an eco-village in Fagervik, Finland. In 2011, Lindman was commissioned to create “Poison and Play” and exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Residencies include “Field_Notes/Deep_Time” at the Biological Reserach Station in Kilpisjärvi, Lapland, hosted by Bioartsociety. Lindman’s latest art project, “Nose Ears Eyes”, was commissioned by the 32nd Sao Paulo Biennale, Incerteza Viva (2016). Starting August 2017, Lindman is doctoral candidate at Lapland University, with research-in-progress titled: The Subsensorial, Between Organisms, Consciousness, and Matter. A result of many years of investigation into the body and its place within the cultural space, Lindman's work responds to a contemporary desire to mend the fission between science and art, healing and creativity – and moves beyond the human body proper to multiple realms of life.

15:15-15:30 Questions and discussions

15:30-15:45

George Steinmann-Laakso,  Symbioses of Responsibility SYMBIOSES OF RESPONSIBILITY

An artistic research project on Climate Change by George Steinmann, Artist. The project serves as a BRIDGE between Art, Science and Indigenous Knowledge. It is based on the artists official governmental mandates at the UN Climate Summits COP21 in Paris, COP 23 in Bonn and the POLAR 2018 Climate Conference.

Climate protection is a public topic and a public asset. To be able to adapt to the consequences of Climate Change , we require an open discours, a participatory planning, integrative approaches and an awareness that adapts to the changing paradigms. It is imperative to collaborate at all levels. Many adaptation and mitigation options can help address Climate Change, but no single option is sufficient by itself. Effective implementation depends on policies and cooperation at all scales, including the Arts and Indigenous Knowledge. A paradigm shift towards a sustainable society is not possible without the form of knowledge art provides. Art is a driving force with which the world in its context can be perceived and respected. 

Dr.h.c. Born 1950 Bern, Switzerland. Visual Artist, Musician and Researcher. Studied Painting in Basel, and Painting, Sound and Afro-American History (with Angela Davis) at the San Francisco Art Institute. Lived in Finland 1970-75. His artistic practice is research oriented and involves field-work where he investigates Climate Change, Biodiversity, Local Indigenous Knowledge (especially Sàpmi Culture)and the Ecologies of Forests, Water and Soil. Transdisciplinary Projects and multimedia exhibitions worldwide, for example Pori Art Museum (1989) and Museum of Contemporary Art, Atheneum Helsinki 1996, (Strangers in the Arctic) COP21 and COP23 UN Climate Conferences in Paris 2015 and  Bonn 2017, Art Museum Krefeld,Taxispalais Innsbruck 2017, Art Museum Thun 2014. 1992-1995 Renovation of Tallinn Art Hall as sustainable Sculpture.  Since 1966 also Performing as musician (incl. Documenta 7 Kassel). Researcher and lecturer in Europe, USA and Asia on aspects of Contemporary Art and Sciene and the relationship of Art-Culture and Sustainability.2011 receives Doctor Honoris Causa from the philosophical-historical faculty of the University Berne, Switzerland.  (After Hermann Hesse, Alberto Giacometti and Ilya Kabakov).

15:45-16:00

Ruth Beer,
Shifting Ground: Energy, Artistic Practices and Creative Resources in Canada’s North

This presentation addresses the challenges faced in northern Canada at the intersection of advancing energy project developments and the transformation of cultures and ecologies in remote regions. Examples of contemporary visual art and digital media by diverse artists will focus on how these artistic and curatorial practices are mapping change and energy transition as they draw our attention to environmental conditions of climate change and social and cultural impacts on everyday life. In consideration of increasing development of major fossil fuel, mining, and hydroelectric projects by resource extraction industries within rural communities, we ask: For artists and researchers with an interest in how we identify Canada as a major global participant in energy industries, how can artistic research be used to illuminate the complex and interlaced dynamics of culture, economy, environment, local particularities and shared experiences in northern geographies and cultures that are located on shifting ground and open water? What kind of transformations are possible when artists and other cultural producers promote dialogue and exchange to further cross-cultural understanding and alliances through the production and presentation of art for sustainable futures?

Ruth Beer is a Professor in the Faculty of Art and Director of ACE (Art/Culture/Environment) Research Studio at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC. She is an artist focused on research-creation and interdisciplinary approaches to artistic practice. Her production of multi-media artworks includes sculpture, video, photography, sound and weaving. She is the recipient of several public art commissions and is the principal investigator for “Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines”, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) supported research-creation project that addresses landscape and communities in relation to the interwoven terrain of traditional Aboriginal trading routes, and an ever-expanding network of oil and gas pipelines throughout British Columbia. Other projects include “The Hidden Cost of Supply Chains” (UBC) and Feminist Energy Futures (U of Alberta) with Canadian and international colleagues.

Caitlin Chaisson is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and curator based in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a sessional faculty teaching “Creative Practices” and “Drawing for Ideas” in the Faculty of Art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her research-based practices intersect around questions of the body, the environment, and social systems. She is the founder of Far Afield, an artist-led initiative that supports rural and regionally-connected artistic and curatorial practices.

16:00-16:15

Anna Svingen-Austestad, OZERO (SCHOOL): How can I tell you so you will understand?

A village, a forest, a water. Ozero (school) is an artist run initiative or organism with nodes in the Arkhangelsk Oblast region in Northern Russia and Östersund/Jämtland in Sweden. The  initiative simultaneously interacts with the local inhabitants, environment and existing institutions, while also seeking to break new ground and open for other voices/paths. With reference to the pedagogy of Jean-Jaques Rousseau and his treatise Emile, or on education [Émile, ou De l’éducation] from 1763[1762], the paper will discuss how the (school) by motoring analogy and semblance can function like a highly-contagious organism. As such it might offer alternative ways of doing sustainable development.

r a k e t a is running interdisciplinary, collaborative projects and experiments within art, design, architecture and digital media.  r a k e t a has been operating since 2000 as an ongoing experiment; a laboratory-in-progress. RAKETA _ PRESS is an independent publishing house founded 2005. https://www.instagram.com/institutet/ 

Anna Svingen-Austestad PhD is an associate professor and art teacher at the University of Agder, Faculty of Fine Arts (NO). Her interdisciplinary research focus on questions related to public and institutional pedagogy, art didactics and aesthetic practices in relation to the German concept of Selbstbildung and post-humanistic perspectives on the production of subjectivity.

16:15-16:30

10 min Majella Clarke, Failure-as-a-Service: Climate Change  VISUAL SHORT PRESENENTATIONS

Presentation of the work  - Failure-as-a-service: climate change is an algorithmic, sound art composition based on the data visualisations of Antti Lipponen at the Finnish Meteological Institute with data curated from NASA GISTEMP 1880-2017. The genre falls within soundart, musical composition, digital art, bio-art and data visualisation. The data from the set is tagged with sounds collected that represent emissions, e.g. the sound of traffic in India,  chainsaws in Indonesia, glacial melt in Greenland etc.vThe composition plays continuously and is designed to only stop when the Paris Agreement's commitment of a global emissions pathway below 2 degrees C. It could well be the longest musical composition/sound art that gets heard. The objective of the project is to raise awareness of climate change and that we are on an emissions pathway that has existential consequences, particularly for the artic. Since the presentation is fairly short and the theme of the summit is arctic art, the presentation will focus on sound art (emissions) from arctic countries.

Majella Clarke is passionate about promoting the role of digital transformation within the circular economy, and how Big Data and AI can be used to solve sustainability and climate change issues. She has more than seven years of experience as a negotiator and advisor to various delegations to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. She has worked in over 35 countries performing music and working on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Majella recently reconnected with her creative ambitions and conducts various ensembles and orchestras. She specialises in the performance and direction of aleatoric music, stochastic music and algorithmic compositions. M Majella holds an MBA from Aalto University, a Master of Science from the University of Helsinki, a Bachelor of Economics from the University of Sydney, with a major in Finance/orchestral conducting from the University of Washington, and a Bachelor of Music in Performance from the University of Sydney.

16:30-16:45