When we think of the Arctic, many images and sounds come to our minds. One of these is the sound of a snowstorm howling round the corners of the house deep in a winter’s night. We sense how the wind shakes the house on its way further on into the darkness. You hear the snowflakes rustling against the window. Another memory is the cadence of trickling water in the spring, dripping from icicles, running in small streams down the street and the sides of the hills. When you walk, you hear a slushing noise, step by step, and your own breathing, interlaced with the susurrus and plopping sounds of the water. You are part of that splash, splosh concert. You are enmeshed in the melting ice and snow, present in the transformation of the snow into small streams of water.
Text: Peter Berliner and Elena de Casas, Association Siunissaq, Greenland
Cover photo: Figures 1–3. Photos taken by the participants in the workshop. Maniitsoq, February 2023. © Siunissaq.
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Soeren Zeuth, Tina Enghoff, Peter Josefsen, and a group of eight young people at the Majoriaq Centre in Maniitsoq did a creativity workshop on snow. In March 2023. The workshop was part of the Centre’s creativity course and was implemented in collaboration with Siunissaq and the New Genre Art Education UArctic project. Its goal was to learn how to create community art by using natural materials for aesthetic expressions, curating an exhibit of the artwork and organizing a community art event.
The participants created a video on walking in snow. Then, the young people planned, curated, and implemented the community art event where they showed the video to the local community. It was well received by the audience as a gift and a shared experience.
It was early spring, the sun shone, and the snow began to melt, first one little drop, then another. The video shows close-ups of melting snow and ice and the reverberance of rhythmic footsteps through the slush.
In the workshop, participants gradually became more attuned to the snow, the ice, the sounds of dripping meltwater, and of footsteps in the melting snow as a means of aesthetic expression. The video transmits the perspectives of the videographers, and as we walk with them through this wondrous landscape, it becomes evident that we are inextricably entwined with the material world. This experience conveys a sense of identity rooted in the world of melting snow. The video not only depicts this environment but also illustrates how we perceive, engage with, and shape our identity in our surroundings.
As an audience, you feel absorbed into the sounds, the images, and the slow rhythm of walking through a landscape of melting snow and ice. The video transmits a deep sensation of the beauty of the often-unnoticed nuances such as a drop falling from an icicle, the patterns of the porous snow, the slushing sound of footsteps, the symphony of sounds. For instance, suddenly you see the icicles as sculptures made by the environment, all of them with its distinctive shape and all part of the melting.
Seeing the video is an adventurous discovery of the world anew with its wonders. You are captivated and amazed by observing, listening to and identifying with the rich details of the landscape you belong to. You become part of it, and it becomes part of you.