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NIAQQUP SAARNgI SAANI-
KULLU QALLORLUgIT
naatsukullammik allagartalerpaa:
“Niaqqup saarngi saanikullu qallorlugit
sanileriiarpakka – side by side –
nuannarineqarpianngilaq quianarpasillunili.”
Malitassiuinermik oqarneq soorunami ingasaassineruvoq,
tassami nunasiaajunnaarneq
nammineq pissutsini malillugu qulaaniit
aalajangiiffigineqarsinnaanngilaq. Taassuma
saniatigut sammivarput puigortuusineq puigortuusinermullu
periaatsit, kalaallit danskillu
inissisimaffiini kinguaariinni amerlaqisuni
atuuttuarsimasut, imaaliallaannaq peerneqarsinnaanngitsut.
Imaassinnaavalumi siunnersuutigineqarsinnaanngilluinnartoq
malitassiap,
allanit paasineqarsinnaanngitsutut ittup, malinneqarnissaa?
Londonimi Goldsmits-imi nunasiaareersimanerup
kingunerinik ilisimatusarfimmi ilinniartitsisup,
lektor Francoise Vergès-ip, puigortuusinerit,
nunasiaatip tarninganiittut, assigiinngitsunut
marlunnut immikkoortippai: Qanganisarpalunnermut
aalajangeerusunnermullu. Qanganisarpaluttumik
puigortuusisitsinerup oqaluttuarisaaneq
ingerlattarpaa pisimasut ilaasa ilumuunnginnerarnerisigut,
tamannalu pissutigalugu ullumi
uagutsinnut aliortukkatut takkuttuartittarlugit.
Oqaatigineqarsinnaanngitsut, nunasiaateqalernerup
ilumut pisimaneranik siornatigullu
amiilaarnartut saqqummiunneqarnissaannik annilaanganeq
pissutigalugu – illuatungaaniluunniit
sapiitsuliornerunernik sorsuanngortitsinerit
sinnerilu puigortuusillugit – ilumuunnginneraannarnagit
atorniarneqarsinnaavoq aalajangiiniarnikkut
puigortuusineq. Taamaaliornikkut
siornatigut pisimasut paasineqarsinnaapput
suut annernarsinnaasut takusinnaanngorlugit,
eqqunngitsuliornerit naleqqutinngitsullu,
eqqaaneqanngikkunik tammarumanngitsut,
nassuerutiginerisigut.
Tassanerpiarlu Arke akuliuppoq periarfissarlu
alla ilusilerlugu. “Soorlu oqaluttuarisaanerup
ilaasa immikkut uppernarsaatissaqarluanngitsulluunniit
aggornerisigut, qujanartumilli ilisarititsinertigut
ataaniittut erseqqissusiat saqqummiunneqartarpoq”,
Carsten Juhl issuaraanni.
Tamanna allanit erseqqinnerujussuarmik takutinneqarpoq
assilissani imminnut atasuni Nature
Morte-mi (ilaatigut taaneqartartuni Perlustrationer
1-10) 1994-imeersumi. Illersornissamut ilisimatusarfiup
ilisimatusarnermut atuagaateqarfiani
– ilaatigut ajoqersuiartortitaasimasut,
ilisimatuut nunasisullu Kalaallit Nunaat pillugu
atuakkiaasa naqeqqaarneri amernik ungalullit
– atuakkat sanileriiaarlugit inissinneqarsimasut
akunnerinut “tassaniissangatinngisat” Arkep
ikkussuuppai. Akunnerisaannik allanik tamanik
tikkuussinermigut (oqaluttuarujussuarmi, isummani
tungaviusuni napatitsiniartussani, akunnequtini
eqqaamasanik avataaniititsiniarnerni,
il.il.) Arkep ini kusanassusilik pilersippaa,
taamaalilluni kingunerlutsitsinerit paasineqarsinnaanngitsut
qaqinneqarsinnaalersillugit,
uagullu aallartissinnaalerlugu anamnese, uagut
nammineq nunasiaateqarnitta oqaluttuassartaanik
nassuiaat.
THEME SECTION 7: FISHING OUT SKULLS AND BONES
Pia Arke’s works persistently concerned
themselves with “Greenland as colonial
history, mapmaking, time, recollection,
space, silence, identity and myth”, as she
herself formulated it. Put a little simply,
however, her investigations say just as
much about Denmark and the Danish
mentality.
Denmark’s 250-year presence in
Greenland as a colonial power has left
deep marks on both countries. There
will always be a bond between the two
places and their peoples and cultures,
also despite the fact that the bond
may for various reasons be difficult to
understand in all its facets. And this
is the case even though certain facets
are so traumatising or perhaps overlaid
with so much sense of guilt that they
are repressed, projected onto someone or
something else or transposed into a more
bearable picture.
This section examines the nature of
the traumas that colonialism has left in
us, how the repressed past works in –
and haunts – us from its subconscious
depths, and finally what role art can
play when past events are to be recalled,
traumas given expression and wounds
healed. Our analysis takes its departure
in a number of Arke’s works and their
interplay with the ethnographic museological
frameworks and objects side by
side with which we have installed them
(sometimes harmoniously, sometimes
stridently out of tune).
As a rule the colonial condition is regarded
as over when the colonial power
leaves the colony and yields economic
and political control over the country to
its original inhabitants – whether this
takes place by way of negotiations or
revolt. But postcolonial experience, as
it has especially been expressed in the
literature and theory that arose in the
wake of the great wave of decolonisation
after World War II, shows that there is
no such thing as a clean historical break
between colony and metropole. And the
personal and national-romantic hopes
that it will be possible to “pop” back to
a precolonial identity when the colonial
oppressor disappears have also been
disappointed. The slate has not been
wiped clean of the alienation and shame
that come along with the fact of having
been colonised.
One might be tempted to say that the
colonial power has not disappeared at
all. Or that it has disappeared physically,
while (all or at any rate) parts of its
essence, its habits and values live on in
the colony as an internalised component
in the mentality of the colonised people,
and in the social structures and political
and administrative organs that bind
them together as a culture and nation.
Arke does not in any way condemn
this state of affairs. But her own recipe
for a genuine mental decolonisation is
not exactly designed for sensitive souls.
Thus, she provides a diptych consisting
of two contrasting Greenlandic motifs (a
frozen fjord landscape and an indeterminate
space of an industrial character)
placed opposite each other with this
trenchant verse:
“Fishing out skulls and bones
I place them in a row – side by side –
It is not popular but it looks entertaining”
The recipe is of course a bit of hype,
for decolonisation cannot in the nature
of things be dictated from above. Furthermore,
we are speaking of repressions
and their mechanisms that have been at
work for so many generations in both the
Greenlandic and the Danish camps that
they do not give up the ghost so easily.
And is it at all advisable to follow the
recipe for something that seems indigestible
for others?
Lecturer in postcolonial studies at
Goldsmiths College in London, Françoise
Vergès, distinguishes between two forms
of repression operating in the colonised
psyche: the conservative and the
constitutive. The conservative repression
controls history in a way that persistently
denies certain parts of the past, which
for that reason continue to haunt one in
the present like ghosts from the grave.
Instead of denying the unspeakable
fact that colonisation took place out
of pure fear of reviving the horrors of
the past – or, conversely, instead of
exaggerating its more heroic aspects
and repressing the rest – one can have
recourse to constitutive repression. This
functions in such a way that one can
take in the past sufficiently to be able
to look the pain it caused in the eye, to
acknowledge that there have been unjust
and inappropriate elements that will not
disappear unless they are remembered.
And it is here Arke comes in and
draws the contours of an alternative.
“For example, by cutting the historical
into parts without any special source
status, but which thanks to the biographical
cut succeed in revealing an
underlying clarity”, to quote historian
Carsten Juhl.
Nowhere does this come more clearly
to expression than in the picture series
Nature Morte (sometimes also referred
to as Perlustrations 1-10) from 1994. In
a research library under the Ministry
of Defence – among leather-bound
first editions of works on Greenland by
the early missionaries, scientists and
colonisers – Arke inserts “foreign bodies”
into the cracks between the books as
they stand there lined up on the shelves.
By pointing at all the other cracks (in
the great narrative, in the ideologies
that are supposed to support it, in the
shutters that are meant to keep out the
memories, etc.) she creates an aesthetic
space, where undigested traumas can
come up to the surface, and we can begin
an anamnesis, an account of our own
colonial histories.
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