tupilakosaurus - Print matters!

TUPILAKOSAURUS
gunngisaannassaaq. Soorlumi Kirsten Thistedip
erseqqissaraa: “…nunasiaatitaasut oqartussaasut
pissusii issuarniaatigalugit pissutsit taakku
pineqartup ilaatigut ‘oqartussaaffiiartarpai’:
pissaaneqangaarnerannik arsaarlugit. Nunasiaatillit
mitallernermut sioorasaarinermullu
taamaattumut illersorsinnaanngillat: nunasiaatigineqartut
sinnera ulikkaartarpaat namminneq
pigisaminnik.”
Tassa Arke arlariinniiginnarsimanngilaq –
illuatungaani kalaaliusutut illuatungaanilu
qallunaatut silarsuarmini. Aammali ilisimatuussutsip
katersugaasiviillu oqartussaaneri naallerarpai.
Malitassaqqissunik oqaasilioriaatsimigut
killissaminillu qaangiinissaminik sioorasaarinermigut
(eqqornerusumilluunniit issittumi
silaaruttutut kamanneq – kingusinnerusukkut
tikinneqarumaartoq) “inuiannullu ataneqmik”
immersuinermigut katersugaasivik isaterpaa
europamiut oqaluttuaata ilaatulli, oqarlunili
oqaluttuat arlallit pineqartut – eqqortoq naakkittaatsoq
ataasiinnaanngitsoq, tassaallutilli
naakkittaatsumik isummernernik illuatungeriinnernillu
imallit amerlaqisut, oqaluttuarujussuup
imarisinnaanngilluinnagai.
“Sioorasaarineq” immaqa erseqqinnerpaavoq
videoliami Tupilakosaurus-imi (1999), saqqummersitsinermullumi
uunga atsiunneqarsimalluni.
Video immiunneqarsimavoq illuatungeriit
amerlaqisut sammillugit: tupilak paarmortumut
(-saurus), oqaluttuatoqqap inuttaa oqaluttuarisaanermik
qanganitsamik ilisimatusarnermut,
eqqumiitsuliortoq ilisimatuumut, arnaq
angummut, nunap inuia qaammaasalimmut,
inuk simersoq qaqortumik amilimmut, avammut
iliuusilik silatusaartumut, timi ilisimasaqarnermut,
susaq susumut, assigisaallu.
Illuatungeriissitsinerit soorunami Arkep nassaarisarinngilai.
Takusassiariinnarpaa uagut
nunavissuarmiut eqqarsartaaserput, tassalu
suulluunniit iluatungeqartut, illuatungeriillu
imminnut mattuttartut. Arlariillutik ataatsimut
peqatigiissinnaapput, aammali imminnut assortuussinnnaapput,
kisiannili kattussinnaanngillat
kattutinngisaannassallutillu.
Eqqarsartaatsimut tassunga illuatungiliullugu
Arke “tukattumik” periaasiliorpoq,
taamalu siunertaqarluni eqqumiitsuliornermik
ilisimatusarnermini ilannguppai pissusitoqqat
“ilisimatuujunnginneq” aamma “kusanartulerinnginneq”:
misigissutsit, eqqumiitsuliornikkut
naleqanngissuseq, “inuiannut ataneq”, politikki
kingunerlutsitsinerillu. Periaatsiminilumi ilisimatuussutsip
naleqartitsinermi nammineer-sinnaassutsimik
piumasaanik soqutiginninnginnermigut
tarnikkulli erloqissuteqarnernik inunnillu
ataasiakkaanik ilanngussinermigut pilersippaa
– Juhl-ip paasisai issuaqqillugit – “kalaallit
ilisimasamikkut itsarnisarsiornerat”.
Inuit ataasiakkaat soorunami silinnerusumik
paasineqassaaq, soorlu Erik Gantip eseqqissaraa
“assilisaasa siunertarisimanngisaannannguatsiarpaat
taakku namminneerlutik
oqaluttuarnissaat. Akerlianik tassarpiaapput
nammineq allallu akunnerminni siunertanik,
isummiussinernik pimoorussinernillu nalunaaruteqaataasussat.”
THEME SECTION 2: TUPILAKOSAURUS
The theme section Tupilakosaurus looks
at Pia Arke’s artistic method and illuminates
some of the central problematics
and devices that she worked with. It
shows and reproduces works that mainly
derive from an exhibition at the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Roskilde in 1999,
to which Arke contributed with a veritable
exhibition within the exhibition. But
it also contains a couple of thematically
related black-and-white silver gelatine
prints from the series Perlustrations 1-10
(1994) (sometimes also referred to as
Nature Morte) and a showcase with research
material that also points to vital
features in Arke’s artistic research.
All the works in An installation that
has to do with histories, which was the
title of her contribution to the exhibition
in Roskilde, process a given issue
of the series of scientific monographs
Meddelelser om Grønland [Communications
on Greenland], which, since 1878
and with two or three volumes each year,
has published international research on
Greenland and expedition reports from
Greenland. More precisely the works take
possession of the pictorial part of Geologist
Eigil Nielsen’s treatise Tupilakosaurus
heilmani n. g. et n. sp. from 1954
and remove the illustrations from their
context – the scientific tradition, and in a
further sense the colonial advances into
foreign territories that have for centuries
made the tradition possible – to place
them inside the museum’s white cube.
That Arke draws science into the
space of art is not just a whim, but a
carefully considered method designed to
show whether the two phenomena could
be thought to have pulled together in
the same colonial direction; what their
mutual relationship (historically and
currently) looks like; and to what extent
one can separate the two phenomena
and put selected parts together to form
a new and more useful practice that
might be called artistic research.
The strength of artistic research is,
according to Carsten Juhl, that such
research is conducted inside the subject
being investigated and not above it as
is customarily the case with research.
It was precisely research of this kind
that was involved in An installation that
has to do with histories. The elements
and the way they were installed were
simple, stringent and of a considerable
museological coolness. But all of a sudden
over the entrance to the installation
there hangs a big plucked thigh bone
and breaks the illusion of the severely
museal setting.
The bone highlights Arke’s ambivalence:
on the one hand, you are expected
to practise in accordance with the norms
in force. But, on the other hand, you as
“ethnic” cannot transcend the category
of “ethnic artist” and become an “artist”
pure and simple. You can, in other
words, mimic the Europeans, but in
the nature of things never become just
like them. For, as literary critic Kirsten
Thisted points out: “…at the same
time as the colonised mimic the forms
of authority, they in a certain sense
‘de-authorise’ these forms: deprive them
of their monumental power. Colonial
authority cannot protect itself against
this mockery and the threat that the
colonised will fill out the text with their
own content.”
Thus, Arke did not just have a foot in
each camp – one in her Greenlandic and
the other in her Danish world. She also
had a bone to pluck with the authority
of science and the museum. With her
choice of a canonised formal language
and with the threat of going off the deep
end (or rather going piblokto – but more
about that later) and filling her form
with “ethnic” content, she dismantles
the museum as a piece of European
history and says instead that it is a
matter of several histories – not of one
raw truth, but of raw quantities of
meaningfulness and opposition that the
big history is quite unable to contain.
Perhaps the “threat” comes most
clearly to expression in the video work
Tupilakosaurus (1999) from which the
present exhibition derives its name.
The video is structured around a large
number of binary oppositions: tupilak
vs. reptile (-saurus), mythical figure vs.
prehistoric science, artist vs. scientist,
woman vs. man, original vs. civilised,
coloured vs. white, dynamic vs. downto-earth,
body vs. knowledge, object vs.
subject, and so on.
These are of course not polarisations
that Arke has invented. She merely
puts on stage a key concept in our
continental philosophy that states that
everything has its opposite, and that
the oppositions are mutually exclusive.
Together they can form a unit, and they
can engage in conflict with one another,
but they are and remain irreconcilable.
To counter this mindset Arke developed
a “messy” practice, in which she
quite deliberately incorporated traditionally
“unscientific” and “unaesthetic”
quantities in her artistic research: feelings,
kitsch, the “ethnic”, politics and
the traumatic. And precisely because
her practice disregarded the demands
of science for value-free research and
included involvement and the personal,
she was able to set up a – to draw once
again on Juhl’s insights – “Greenlandic
archaeology of knowledge”.
The personal, it should be noted, is
to be understood in an expanded sense,
for as critic Erik Gant points out: “it has
probably never been the idea that her
pictures should speak for themselves.
On the contrary, they are meant to
function precisely as the medium for
all sorts of intentions, messages and
commitments in the relation between
herself and others.”
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