Curators Statement

ARCTICNOISE is a media installation that draws on archival film footage and sound materials sourced from the Isuma Archive at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as sound and film materials from the artist’s personal collection, onsite research obtained from a trip to Igloolik, and other ethnographical material. Conceived as an Indigenous response to Glenn Gould’s celebrated composition “The Idea of the North”, Inutiq will appropriate Gould’s piece as a musical score, paired with new voices and imagery to produce a layered and multi-vocal work. The project folds into Inutiq’s larger practice of his alter-ego, madeskimo that draws on the use of instruments, digital and analogue synthesizers, as well as the remixing and processing of samples from a large variety of sources —including traditional Inuit, Aboriginal, modern electronic and urban music— in order to create an experimental platform. At its crux, ARCTICNOISE intends to initiate conversations between various communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and to provoke thoughtful exchange about the roles of Inuit orality and materiality in a post-colonial space within the context of new media artwork. New media, with its appropriative and collage-like nature, is employed as a specific strategy to foster a multivocal and multi-generational approach to these sensitive issues. The hope is that by reframing archival sources alongside contemporary technologies and materials, insightful and affective connections will emerge. As a multimedia work, ARCTICNOISE aims to re-purpose past Inuit visual and sound media in an attempt to conflate temporalities of past and present with the aims of repurposing and mobilizing understandings of Inuit art aesthetics.
“The Idea of the North”: youtube.com/watch?v=3MeTImOtqYc

• Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.   yasminnurmingpor.com
• Britt Gallpen is a writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. brittgallpen.com

ARTICNOISE is funded by Mobilizing Inuit Cultural Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.