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The Work: Iqaluit October 16-22

October 16th:

On Day One, the Common Plants Artist Participants, Jolene Arreak, Sylvia Cloutier and Celina Kalluk gathered with the Creative/ Research Team comprised this time of project members Judith Rudakoff, Myles Warren and Andrew Cheng. The southerners arrived at the Accomodations By The Sea Bed & Breakfast midday and while waiting for the Artist Participants, took advantage of the cooperative weather to document the relatively warm autumn day, which was a major shift from the previous Iqaluit workshops in February 2006 where the temperature hovered at minus thirty to minus forty degrees celcius.

The group viewed video recordings of the creative responses to the Four Elements and The Ashley Plays: Where is Ashley’s Home as performed by the Artist Participants in South Africa which were filmed during the Common Plants workshops in July, 2006.
After first viewing the creative responses to the Four Elements, discussion of the themes and content of the work ensued, and it was remarked by the Iqaluit participants that even though the creative responses were deeply personal and largely non-narrative in content or form, they were evocative and clearly referenced the elements. The Artist Participants expressed that they felt a commonality of experience with their Cape Town counterparts, and were adamant that they felt that they had connected with the emotional story of each creative response piece.

One of the observations during the discussion of the South African creative responses was the importance of the weight of breath and how breath both enables life and gives voice. Arreak made the observation that “The Inuit are a culture of stories that we pass on. Breath passes on our history, our life and our way.”
MRudakoff then introduced the context of recent South African history: political, social, economic and spiritual. Further, she pointed out to the Artist Participants, as we continued to review the creative responses, that much could be “read” from the bodies and the movement and the voices as well as from both the spoken text and vocal sounds performed by the Artist Participants. Giving the Iqaluit Artist Participants the suggestion to “look at my body, to see my history” she facilitated the ensuing discussion of how we carry our past within.
MThe Iqaluit Artist Participants offered, as cultural and tacit knowledge were discussed, that appearances were often curiously deceptive as to heritage in a country and particularly in a territory where mixed heritage is common.

The Artist Participants initiated a discussion of the role of names in Inuit culture, offering that family history could be traced through each of the many names an individual is given. Further, they taught the Creative/Research Team about the role of each name, which might come from a relative, a person—living or dead—in the community, and that the newly named individual was said to carry characteristics and behavioural patterns of each of the people whose named they bear. This alters the notion of how people interact, as a young child named after a great grand parent might offer their ancestor’s wisdom to their own parent. Or a person whose namesake was brave and strong might pass that characteristic on to the person who now bears their name. The passing of a name to a new person comes, in other words, with responsibilities and with gifts. Cloutier further explained, “We do not view a child as a helpless being, but rather a person with experiences of their past lives.”

Next, the group viewed The Ashley Plays: Where is Ashley’s Home? The Ashley plays are a site specific cycle of devised one person short plays inspired by a collectively created profile of “Ashley”. In Cape Town, Rudakoff tasked each Artistic Participant to create their Ashley play and perform it in their home. In Iqaluit, the Artist Participants, after crafting the Ashley profile (which allows for a large degree of individual interpretation, including choice of gender for Ashley) were asked to decide on a location in which they would set their Ashley performance.

This incarnation of The Ashley Plays was titled The Ashley Plays: Two Worlds in recognition of the many binary worlds implied in the lives of the people living in Nunavut. The characteristics assigned to Ashley by the Artist Participants were that Ashley has four names drawn from four people who died in the same plane crash; has questioned the wisdom of Inuit tradition; has a soul like white snow; feels connected to the land and is a part of nature; can speak many languages, including being able to communicate with elemental beings; has a child, but is neither in direct communication with nor really knows the child; has lived two different lives. In addition, the Artist Participants chose to refer to Ashley by both his/her English name and an Inuit variation, Ashevok. This presented an interesting interpretation of the Ashley Play provocation that participants must select the gender of “their Ashley” as in Inuit culture, names are not gender specific.

October 17th:

As in the February 2006 Common Plants workshops, we were based at the Atii Fitness Centre, which provided a large open studio space.
MThe first exercise was for the Artistic Participants to create a “There are stories about…” focussing on the Ashley they were creating. In particular, the litany of images being chronicled was to explore aspects of Ashley’s home. This exercise was introduced early in the process to give the Artist Participants a means of quickly establishing a landscape for their Ashley Play. They were able, through their writing, to create a location, a set of given circumstances, and began to evolve a perspective from which their Ashley narrative would be told.

Initially, Kalluk intended to take the perspective of a father, Cloutier of a mother figure, and Arreak as either an elder or as a child listening to an elder.
MAs the “There are stories about…” exercised progressed, Cloutier created a voice of an elder who referred to young people as carrying the experiences of their ancestors, rather than relating to youth as reckless or irresponsible. Ashley, in this piece, was not the active character and had, in fact, been dead for several years. Cloutier envisioned her active character at home, in their living room, surrounded by children playing and making noise. She began to develop a joyous household, located in an old house, where the windows have fogged up from the cooking of traditionally prepared meat boiling on the stove. Cloutier made the character aware of the snow on the ground outside in early autumn. Cloutier didn’t specify the gender of this elder, and was clear that the character was alive, wise, and available to answer questions, while not being an extrovert. To further develop the play, Rudakoff asked Cloutier to decide what the character would say at this gathering, and what would be the gift the listeners would receive from the elder?

Kalluk created a male Ashley figure, who was a father, hunter and artist. She was drawn to the image of a man with a frozen beard. Kalluk spoke about Ashley or “Ash” (the diminutive form of his Inuit name) and specified that he would live as long as the character speaking was alive, implying that the character carried his name and some of his spirit and characteristics. Rudakoff probed for Ashley/ Ash’s origins and Kalluk succintly responded that he was part of the world of magic. Rudakoff then asked Kalluk to consider whether she wanted the character speaking, as her primary dramatic goal, to honour, remember or invoke Ash for a specific purpose.

Arreak elected to speak in Ashley’s voice which she designated as a voice heard by children. Her Ashley was a storyteller whose tales were told not just through content but also through the mode of presentation. Arreak explained that the tradition of Inuit storytelling included choice of location for the story, surrounding ambience, and time and which it was told. The meaning of a story for the listener would be different according to these and many more variables. Rudakoff then asked Arreak to consider all of these important component of her Ashley play: where, when and how to tell the story and what her characters wants the audience to learn.

October 18th:

Following on the previous day’s discussion of the importance of location and environment, Rudakoff invited each Artist Participant to choose a specific outdoor location for the telling of their developing “There are stories about Ashley” piece.

The location did not need to be a place where their Ashley would be, but rather a place the artist participant could evoke their character’s voice and create the effect they wanted the story to have. To this end, Cloutier was recorded on a dirt road outside her mother’s house in town; Kalluk was recorded in front of a large wall-sized, full colour mural she and another artist had painted on the side of a building; Arreak was recorded sitting on a rock on the tundra overlooking the water beside her home.

Later in the day, the Artist Participants and Creative/Research Team traveled to an area of Iqaluit called Road to Nowhere, a long, winding unpaved road that ends at the sand pits. As the winter freeze up hadn’t yet occurred, the river that runs through the tundra in this area was flowing freely. Cloutier elected to tell another Ashley story sitting beside the rushing river, and then sang a song in Inuktitut to honour loss and those lost.

October 19th:

In the morning, back at the Atii Fitness Centre, Rudakoff used Cloutier’s computer to call up the Common Plants website. She then invited the Artist Participants to listen to the body soundmaps (vocal creative work prepared by the Cape Town Artist Participants as part of their work in July with Mark Fleishman in Week One). Rudakoff subsequently asked the Iqaluit Artist Participants to respond vocally to the work of the Cape Town artis participants, using verbal or non verbal sounds made with their bodies. The Artist Participants were recorded responding to two of the Cape Town body sound maps and then Rudakoff asked them to initiate a body sound map of their own, which would then be offered to the Cape Town Artist Participants for their creative response.

In the afternoon session, Rudakoff asked each Artist Participant to create a photo journal of Iqaluit through Ashley’s eyes, or photograph images that represented a chronicle of Ashley’s real or spiritual life.

In response, Kalluk took several pictures by the water near the Iqaluit Cemetary. She documented objects and plant life washed a shore; a women’s purse standing alone on a rock revealed by the low tide; animal bones, and tracks in the sand; her own feet consumed by seaweed; a shadowy being near a garbage bin.

Cloutier explored the environment and photographed found objects in peculiar relationships with the landscape. She perceived the dual nature of the urban Inuit and explored items that represented, to her Ashley, the traditional and the contemporary reality.

Arreak took the group to several areas, from the Iqaluit cemetery to the location of the oil reserves. In these places, Arreak identified and captured images of unexpected beauty that her Ashley acknowledged.

The Artist Participants and the Creative/Research Team used digital cameras (and Rudakoff used the Lomo camera) to see through Ashley’s eyes: what did Ashley see that was beautiful and what did Ashley see that was ugly? The distinction too between images of comfort and safety and images of fear and uncertainty became apparent.

October 20th:

The final day of the workshop was dedicated to filming each Artist Participant in their home, performing their Ashley Play. Given the importance of storytelling in the Inuit culture, this incarnation of The Ashley Plays took the form of a series of stories, told from the perspective of the performer. The final Ashley play presentations were complemented by the early work, including the recorded “There are stories about…” exercise and in this version, the collage effect of the components was clearly important.
MWe began The Ashley Plays: Two Worlds in Arreak’s home where amist the bustle of her family’s daily life, she told stories of Ashley’s childhood.

As Arreak told us different stories about levels of respect children must have for their elders, and humorous moments when that respect was questionable, she offered us home made biscuits she’d baked and hot tea. Arreak’s Ashley play spoke to the importance of laughter and the need for honesty. She spoke of families listening to the radio during blizzards where humour was always present. She told the tale of a contest for the best and funniest joke told live on the radio on a talk show during one blizzard and how people told the most deeply personal stories, some of which might be considered sad or frightening or embarassing…but always with humour. Arreak’s Ashley Play had her audience laughing at bodily functions, at people’s need to speak to each other in times of need. Arreak would later continue her Ashley Play at Kalluk’s home at the end of the day, creating a frame for the cycle.

In her home, Cloutier’s Ashley Play was told by an elder who related a story about Ash, a man who as a boy lost his eye in a fishing accident. In great detail, the character recounted how a hook from a fishing rod being cast accidentally caught Ash’s eye and flung it far out into the sea. Ash, the character continued, grew up to be a kind man, and was attractive despite his one-eyed appearance. At night Ash would dream of animals in the water, and they would give him comfort, except for the whales whose size and strength intimidated him. Ash, Cloutier’s character told us, never had good dreams about whales.

One day, Ash saw a whale swimming in the bay. He knew he had to confront the whale, and he began to hunt it alone in his kayak. The whale led him farther and farther out to sea, but he did not turn. Then, suddenly, the whale appeared under his kayak and he looked down into the eye of the whale, where he was surprised to see his own lost eye. Cloutier’s character then explained that in the moment when Ash saw his own eye, grown to the size of the whale eye, he finally saw himself and understood who he was, for the very first time.

Kalluk told us a story, as we sat around her on the floor of her living room, of Ashley as a sad little girl. Kalluk first told the story of this girl as a person who knew of the history, but partially through the Ashley Play, she started to speak in the first person, making it clear that her Ashley was now able to tell her own story. Kalluk’s Ashley lived her early life feeling abandoned and discarded by her immediate family. She was made to feel lesser than the other children in the household where she lived, which was in a remote area. One day, Kalluk’s Ashley explained, she was sent to her uncle’s house to borrow sugar. As she was walking along the road, alone and scared as it was night time, she saw a man standing in the dump among the broken and discarded objects. She was in a hurry to fulfil her family’s bidding, so didn’t stop but as she scrutinized the man from afar, she thought that this must be one of her uncle’s. Though Kalluk’s Ashley never saw the taraksiuk’s face fully, for if she did it would mean she had left the physical world for good, she was, in fact, certain that she had seen her uncle at the dump. When she arrived at her aunt’s home, Kalluk’s Ashley asked her aunt to explain what her uncle was doing at the dump. Her aunt turned white and reported that this could not be possible, as this uncle had left just that morning on a long trip and was already far, far away from the dump.

Kalluk’s Ashley, now speaking as an adult and in the first person, explained that the being Ashley saw was a taraksiuk, one of the beings that is real, and of this earth, but only gives permission to certain people to see them. In this case, Kalluk’s Ashley explained, the taraksiuk had appeared to a sad and lonely child to let her know she was not alone, and that there was hope.
MAfter Kalluk finished her Ashley Play, Arreak asked to continue her Ashley Play. This story was told of Ashley as a young girl, who like other women in her family, had been abused by male relatives. As a girl Arreak’s Ashley’s brothers were cruel to her, but her grandfather saw her quiet sadness and waited for the day he would give her strength. One day Ashley’s grandfather took all the children in the family out on the land to hunt caribou. Ashley was the only girl in the group and while the boys travelled the land without much care, Ashley stayed near her grandfather and listened to his stories. He taught her the secrets of hunting through is stories and as a result Ashley remained quiet and downwind of the caribou, and was able to hunt and kill the largest one to the dismay of her brothers and male cousins.

Ashley carried the animal back home herself, on her back, proving her physical strength as well as her prowess as a hunter. Arreak’s Ashley continued to learn from her wise grandfather, and one of the most important lessons she learned from him was that though she would live her life as a female, by virtue of her gifts and the strengths she inherently possessed, despite any challenges from family or the world, she would survive and she would be as strong as any man.

At then end of the performances of The Ashley Plays: Two Worlds the Artist Participants and the Creative/Research Team shared coffee and cakes and shared more stories of Inuit life and culture. The group made a commitment to continue the process and to encourage further collaboration with the Artist Participants in South Africa. The work, while challenging because of content and relatively brief work time, offered insight and clarity on issues that are shared amongst the Artist Participants in the North and the South and have offered multitudes of possibility for further cross pollinations.

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