Decolonising the Camera: Photography and Lens-based Art from Greenland and the Arctic
The seminar is free and open to the general public but registration for attendance on-site is required.
The event will also be live-streamed. Registration for the stream is not required. Access the Zoom live stream
The seminar is organized on the occasion of Inuuteq Storch being selected by the Danish Arts Foundation to exhibit at the Venice Biennale 2024 – as the first artist from Greenland as well as the first photographer to create a solo exhibition at the Danish Pavilion. Storch’s work conveys contemporary Greenlandic identity and everyday life in photographic series that are snapshot-like and intuitive, physical and poetic, playful and humorous. Storch also has a profound understanding of photography's potential as a cultural, social and historical document, and he has a strong wish to work for the establishment of a Greenlandic museum of photography.
Decolonising the Camera: Photography and Lens-based Art from Greenland and the Arctic is inspired by the themes and questions raised in Inuuteq Storch’s work, and the seminar follows these into a larger context of contemporary artistic lens-based practice. With a critical approach to photography's historical role in Western colonization and Nordic colonialism as a common outset, the speakers will explore the potential of photography, film and lens-based art in creating more nuanced stories of and by Greenland and Greenlanders.
Inuuteq Storch will discuss his work in general and the photo book in particular with graphic designer and publisher Jacob Birch. Other speakers include Heather Igloliorte, art historian and activist from Concordia University in Montréal, who will discuss Storch's work in the larger context of Arctic contemporary art. Curator, researcher and director of Autograph in London, Mark Sealy (whose book Decolonising the Camera inspired the title of the seminar) talks with Mette Sandbye and Louise Wolthers about the potentials of photography in an ongoing decolonization and the photographic activism of indigenous peoples today. The Greenlandic film producer Emile Hertling Péronard will talk about creating visual stories about and from Greenland.
The seminar is supported by the Danish Agency for Culture and Palaces.
Programme
| 12:30 | Mette Sandbye | Welcome address: Photographic Representations of the Inuit People in Greenland – Then and Now |
| 13:00 | Inuuteq Storch and Jacob Birch | Conversation |
| 13:45 | Mark Sealy, Mette Sandbye and Louise Wolthers | Conversation: Decolonising the Camera? |
| 14:30 | Coffee break | |
| 15:00 | Heather Igloliorte | Lecture: Contemporary Media Arts in Inuit Nunangat: Contextualizing this Moment (Live streamed via video link) |
| 15:45 | Emile Hertling Péronard | Lecture: Greenlandic Cinema – Why should we tell our own stories? |
| 16:40 | Closing remarks | |
| 17:00 | Mingle (drinks and snacks) |
Sign-up deadline: 30 January 2024.
Please direct all inquiries to Oscar Schönström
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