Participants

Inuit and Cree Children

    • A. K.

      I am ten years old and I am in grade 5 and I go to Badabin Eeyou school. I have a mom, dad and sisters. They are nice, funny and kind. My mom works at the daycare and my dad is a police officer. What I like to do is to visit my granma’s, watch TV and to play outside. I like my home and I like to drive around.
    • A. W.

      I am 8 years old.
    • B. K.

      My name is Billy. I am ten years old. My hair color is brown. My best class is gym. My best friend is Morgon. I really like my puppy. I have 1 sister and 5 brothers. I wish I had a mini honda. I am in grade 4. I am 147 cm tall.
    • C. C.

      I am ten years old and I am in grade five. I go to school at Badabin Eeyou school. My mom works at the school. I like to play baseball, watch TV and play videogames. I also like play hockey and to go sliding.
    • D. M.

      I am 10 years old and I am a grade 5 student at Badabin Eeyou school. I have a mom, dad, brother and 2 sisters. They are very nice. My mom works at the band office and my dad works at the maintenance. My mom is very nice, my dad is funny, my brother is funny, my oldest sister is nice, and my younger sister is mean. I like to watch movies, go hunting, play hockey, swim and English class.
    • D. P.

      My name is David. I am 8 years old. I am in grade 3. My hair is color brown. I have short hair. My eyes are brown. My best class is free time. My best friend is Glen. I don't like Aikimi. I really like Billy. I have 5 sisters. I have 3 brothers. I wish I had money. I also wish I had a cousin.
    • D. R.

      I am 10 years old and I am in grade 5. My teacher is Lindsey Johns. I have three brothers and I have no sisters. My mom works at the M.S.D.C and my dad I don’t know where he works. I like to watch movies and go to school. I also like hunting. I like to go swimming and go to the beach.
    • G. A.

      I am 12 years old.
    • G. T.

      My name is Glen. I am 11 years old. I am in grade 5. I am 144 cm tall. My hair is the color brown. I have short hair. My eyes are the color brown. My best class is culture. My best friend is Ittuk. I don't like Gilbert. I really like my bike. I have two sisters. I have 4 brothers. I wish I had a 2-wheeler. I also wish I had a mini honda.
    • I.

      ARTCO Participant in Kuujjuarapik
    • I. M.

      My name is Izunga. I am 150 cm tall. My hair is the color brown. I am 9 years old. I am in grade 4. I have long hair. My eyes are the color brown. My best class is culture. My best friend is Annie. I don't like barbies. I really like pizza. I have 1 sister. I have 1 brother. I wish I had a honda.
    • J. A.

      I am 10 years old.
    • J. S.

      I am ten years old and I’m in grade 5 at Badabin Eeyou School. I have a mom, dad, brother, one sister and one nephew. Five things I like are to play games, always go outside, Math and English and go to the hill.
    • J. W.

      I am 12 years old.
    • L. N.

      My name is Louisa. I am 11 years old. I am 132 cm tall. My hair is the color brown black. I have long hair. My eyes are the color black. My best class is class. My best friend is Veronica. I don't like moose. I really like dogs. I have 5 sisters. I have 5 brothers. I also wish I had a cat.
    • M. A.

      My name is Margaret. I am 10 years old. I am in grade 4. My hair is the color brown. I have long hair. My eyes are the color brown. My best class is Math. My best friend is Abby. I don't like orange. I really like red. I have 1 sister. I have 0 brothers. I wish I had an iPod. I also wish I had an iPad.
    • P.

      ARTCO Participant in Kuujjuarapik
    • R. K.

      My name is Rachel. I am 12 years old. I am in grade 6. My hair is the color brown. I have short hair. My eyes are the color brown. My best class is reading. My best friend is Elisipi. I don't like my brothers. I really like pizza. I have one sister. I have 4 brothers. I wish I had a cat. I also wish I had a baby sister.
    • S. G.

      I am 11 years old and I’m in grade 5. My family is my mom, dad, 3 brothers and 2 sisters. My family is funny and nice. I like to play with my puppy, I play outside, I like to hunt and I like to eat pizza.
    • S.M.

      I am 10 years old and I’m in grade 5 at the Badabin Eeyou school. I have a mom, dad, and sisters. They are nice and funny. My dad is a firefighter and my mom is a probation officer. I like to play hockey, watch movies and go to school. I also like to visit my friends and go hunting.
    • T. G.

      I am 10 years old. I am grade five. I go to Badabin Eeyou school. My family is my mom, my dad, my brothers. My mom works at the hospital. My family are like funny and nice. I like walking and running and coloring and sleeping and sitting.
    • T. K.

      I am 11 years old.
    • V. F.

      My name is Veronica. I am 7 years old. I am in grade 3. My hair is the color brown. I have medium hair. My eyes are the color black. My best class is grade 3 art. My best friend is Louisa. I don't like cats. I really like swimming. I have 2 sisters. I have 3 brothers. I wish I had an iPad 2 . I also wish I had a swimming pool.

Workshop artists

    • Diego Espinosa

      ARTCO music workshop leader I am a percussionist/composer specialized on contemporary music. I devote most of my time to interdisciplinary artistic projects. I was born and raced in Mexico City having the opportunity to be in touch with several Mexican indigenous communities where many experiences and friends have substantially changed my life. I have performed in all five continents collaborating with artists like Pierre Boulez, John Zorn, Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho, Alvin Currant, Frederic Rzewski, Anthony Pateras, and John Luther Adams. I am a member of the groups The Electronic Hammer, Insomnio ensemble, and Ear Massage percussion quartet with whom we were awarded 2nd prize at the Gaudeamus Interpreters Competition (2009) and 3rd Prize at the International Percussion Competition (2005). At the moment I study a doctorate on music performance at McGill University with the financial support of the fellowships MIDAS, Schulich, and Provost. www.earmassage.com www.electronichammer.com www.insomnio.nl
    • Diego Rivera

      ARTCO video workshop leader I am a film director and and an interactive media producer based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. As a director and producer of films and interactive media , I look to contribute to an audio-visual culture that is rational, critical, thoughtful, and socially relevant, which contributes to the understanding of our reality. One of the objectives I have when doing my work is to foster social development, to spread culture and tradition, promote human rights, diffuse scientific understanding and stimulate artistic creativity. Some of my work has been screened at festivals in Europe, Asia, and North and South America, including festivals such as IDFA 2000 (Amsterdam, Netherlands), HotDocs 2008 (Toronto, Canada), 2009 Thessaloniki Documentary Festival (Thessaloniki, Greece), and others. While living in Mexico, I was one of the co-founders of the organization Homovidens, an audiovisual laboratory which focused on producing documentaries with a concern for social justice issues. The film Voces de la Guerrero is emblematic of the work emerging from Homovidens. This project was a video documentary narrating the experience of the participants in a video and photo workshop dedicated to street children in Mexico city. I completed a Bachelor of Arts degree in Audiovisual Media Production in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in affiliation with the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel in Paris (INA), France. I also completed a Masters of Fine Arts (Film Production) at Concordia University in Montreal and graduated from the prestigious Interactive Media training program at the Institut National de l’Image et du Son (I.N.I.S.) in Montreal, Canada.
    • Gabriela Gamez

      Since 2006 I have been working as part of the Isuma collective with indigenous children, artists and media makers in the Canadian Arctic and Latin America, exploring new solutions using video, art and new media technologies as tools for social transformation. I am currently working with John and Ruben on a project called Time Machine, a project to Inuit make comic stories using iPods or mobiles. In 2011, with the help and guidance of a group of inspiring people, I designed ARTCO as a project to experiment ways in which we can explore and practice the power, the benefit, and the creative energy of collective action. The questions behind ARTCO were: How can children and youth use new media to share experience, resolve common problems and find new ways to communicate across old barriers? and What is the “tool-kit” they need to be active participants in the reality they live in? Under the direction of Norman Cohn, I was responsible of the design and concept creation of www.isuma.tv a collaborative multimedia platform for indigenous filmmakers and media organizations, where each user can design their own space, or channel, to reflect their own identity, mandate and audience. Within Isuma I was also project manager of the web platform of Digital Indigenous Democracy (DID); DIAMA, a project for digitizing the Inuit and Aboriginal media archive; and, the Indigenous Film Network project for community film distribution. I was born in Mexico City and have lived in Montreal, Canada since 2006. I studied Sociology and Political Science. In Mexico I worked as a consultant for UNESCO and the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mexican Department for Education (SEP) and the Mexican Department for Social Development (SEDESOL). I love being with my friends and family, yoga, walking, running, listening to music and I'm getting back to playing piano. Oh! and I love coffee!
    • Sophie Prive

      ARTCO mural workshop leader I have completed my Bachelor of Visual Arts from Université Laval in 1999. Since 2001, I have given different art courses and workshops and I have participated in many group or solo exhibitions mostly in Quebec and Toronto. My artworks investigate the fluid and illogical nature of dreams and the construction of memory. People in my painting are transcribed from my personal collection of photographs documenting insignificant moments with family and friends. I want to represent the complexity of our language, and depict my emotions about our current way of living and about the actual world situation. sophieprivearts.blogspot.com I’m very excited about the ARTCO project. I think that art is an act of sharing, and believe that art must be fleeting, and to be taken as an experience to understand the other, in the present.

Community coordinators

Teachers

    • Dayna Steadman

      Inuit School - 3rd, 4th & 5th Grades
    • Lindsey Johns

      My name is Lindsey Johns. I am the Grade Five teacher at Badabin Eeyou School. I have 12 students in my class – 7 boys and 5 girls, we have a lot of fun together at school! Before I came to Whapmagoostui with my boyfriend Chris and my dog Hudson, I used to live in Barrie, Ontario with my family. I have a mom, dad and sister who also live in Barrie. My brother, David, lives in a town called Sudbury. I am going to be an aunt in a few weeks when my sister has a baby! I am very excited. After I finished high school, I went to university in Toronto at York University and got my Bachelor of Arts degree. While I was a student at York, I went on an exchange to Barbados and lived there and went to school for a year! After I was finished at York, I went to Australia and attended Griffith University to become a teacher. I love to travel, and would like to go to Europe and South America next. I love going to the beach and swimming in the ocean! I like to read, sew and bake. My favorite thing to do on the weekend is go for walks with Chris and Hudson and explore the town!

Guests

    • Derek Aqqiaruq

      ARTCO's guest from Igloolik / I am 29 years old. I have two kids. I am with a rock band. I have been doing documentaries for two years. I am with Artcirq for 10 years. And I am from Igloolik.
    • Mennatalla Shawky

      ARTCO Dance Workshop Artist
    • Terry Uyarak

      ARTCO's guest from Igloolik. I am part of the Arcirq circus in Igloolik. I live in Ottawa. I'm representing the circus in Ottawa this year. I believe very much in traditional knowledge in the modern society. Mixing. I am 25 years old. I love my language. I love my life. I have a 1 year old daughter. And a beautiful girlfriend named Tanya.
    • Zach Kunuk

      Zacharias Kunuk (b. 1957, Kapuivik near Igloolik) won the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2001 for Isuma’s first feature, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner. He is president and co-founder in 1990 of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first Inuit-owned independent production company. In 1981, Kunuk sold three sculptures in Montreal and brought home the Arctic’s first home video camera. Kunuk’s credits include the short dramas Qaggiq (Gathering Place, 1989), Nunaqpa (Going Inland, 1991) Saputi (Fish Traps, 1993) and documentaries Nipi (Voice, 1999), Nanugiurutiga (My First Polar Bear, 2001) and Kunuk Family Reunion (2004); as well as Isuma’s 13-part TV series Nunavut (Our Land, 1995), broadcast on Bravo! and exhibited at Dokumenta 11 in 2002. Having completed the documentary Kiviaq versus Canada, Kunuk is shooting his latest documentary Exile. Kunuk is the winner of the National Arts Award, National Aboriginal Achievement Award and in 2005 was awarded the Order of Canada.

Behind the scenes

    • Adriana Olmos

      Interaction designer I am a researcher at the Shared Reality Lab at McGill University. My work as an interaction designer involves collaborating with various communities, from jazz musicians to medical students and surgeons. This is about transforming field research discoveries into design opportunities by storyboarding, prototyping and testing design proposals in an iterative manner. When I am not working on other side projects like ARTCO, I am helping elderly people to improve their computer skills, organizing a lecture series called Iterati.ca, hiking, climbing, learning various dance forms (Swing, Tap, Irish, classical ballet and Khatar Indian dance) or collecting pictures of inspiring objects and actions.
    • Cara Di Staulo

      I am the Webmaster for IsumaTV! For the last four years, I have helped finance, coordinate and distribute several projects for the Artcirq Inuit Performance Collective, Arnait Video Productions, Kingulliit Productions and Igloolik Isuma Productions. Through these projects, I have had the privilege of traveling to Igloolik on three occasions, and discovering Inuit culture and way of life first hand. Since graduating from the University of Québec in Montréal (UQÀM) with a B.A. in Communications, I have also worked as Assistant Coordinator for the Montreal International Documentary Festival and the Producer's Network at the Cannes Film Festival. Since I was a child, I have been a huge movie buff. I also envoy cooking, discovering new flavors and cuisines, reading, biking, hiking and rock climbing.
    • Gabriela Gamez G

      ARTCO new media workshop leader For the past five years I have been working with indigenous children, artists and media makers in the Canadian Arctic and Latin America, exploring new solutions using video, art and new media technologies as tools for social transformation. With the help and guidance of a group of inspiring people, I designed ARTCO as a project to experiment ways in which we can explore and practice the power, the benefit, and the creative energy of collective action. The questions behind ARTCO were: How can children and youth use new media to share experience, resolve common problems and find new ways to communicate across old barriers? and What is the “tool-kit” they need to be active participants in the reality they live in? Under the direction of Norman Cohn, I was responsible of the design and concept creation of www.isuma.tv an online platform for indigenous and non-indigenous media makers. Within Isuma I also coordinated DIAMA, a project for digitizing the Inuit and Aboriginal media archive; and, the Indigenous Film Network project for community film distribution. I was born in Mexico City in 1979 and have lived in Montreal, Canada since 2006. I studied Sociology and Political Science. In Mexico I worked as a consultant for UNESCO and the International Labour Organization (ILO), the Mexican Department for Education (SEP) and the Mexican Department for Social Development (SEDESOL). I love being with my friends and family, yoga, walking, running, listening to music and I'm getting back to playing piano. Oh! and I love coffee!
    • Guillermo Espinosa-Velasco

      ARTCO Advisor I began working with the Wixárika People in 1971. I was head of the Computer Science Master Program at UNAM, head of the Social Systems Department of IIMAS-UNAM, head of the National Indian Institute (Mexico), head of the Inter-American Indian Institute (specialized organ of the OAS), and member of the Advisory Council of the National Human Rights Commission (Mexico). I work for the Mexican Center of Solidarity Entailment since 2007, which promotes active citizen participation. I participated in the government staff that promoted an Amendment on Indian Rights (1992, Mexico). For me Indian knowledge is a valuable heritage of Humankind, and art is a liberating activity that may also contribute to social transformation. I was born in Mexico (1947), and studied mathematics at UNAM-Mexico.
    • Jerome Bossert

      Jerome Bossert lived in Kuujjuarapik - Whapmagoostui for 3 years working in different technology projects. He took some amazing pictures that we used for the ARTCO website and he was our first contact to work in the community.
    • John Hodgins

      I have been the Technical Director and technology project manager for IsumaTV since our launch in 2008. I've managed the growth of the site from a simple video blog to an interactive social networking and OTT VOD platform, as well as acting as lead developer for a variety of Isuma's digital projects. I've travelled extensively in the Canadian Arctic managing installation of IsumaTV MediaPlayers in Igloolik, Pangnirtuq and Iqaluit. More recently I've developed the technology behind Isuma's increasing (and exciting!) live video presence.
    • Norman Cohn

      Norman Cohn (b. 1946, New York) is a video artist and filmmaker, and president and co-founder with Zacharias Kunuk of Kunuk Cohn Productions, co-founder of Isuma Distribution International and IDI's website IsumaTV. A Canadian citizen since 1981, Cohn lived and worked in Igloolik from 1985-2005. In 1990, as one of four founding partners of Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. with Kunuk, elder Pauloosie Qulitalik and the late Paul Apak, Cohn's early video work helped develop Isuma’s signature style of ‘re-lived' cultural drama, combining the authenticity of modern activist video with the ancient art of Inuit storytelling. Cohn is producer, co-writer and cameraman for the Cannes-winning feature, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, the Nunavut (Our Land) TV series and most of Isuma’s collective videography through 2005; co-director with Zacharias Kunuk on The Journals of Knud Rasmussen which opened the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and the 2014 non-fiction feature, Ataatama Nunanga (My Father's Land), on the 2012 Baffinland Iron Mine Environmental Assessment Public Hearings. Cohn led creation of IsumaTV's website starting in 2007 and was co-director with Zacharias Kunuk of Digital Indigenous Democracy from 2012-14 using new media to inform and consult Inuit to improve democratic participation in the Baffinland Iron Mine environmental review. Before moving to Igloolik in 1985 Cohn’s solo video exhibition, Norman Cohn: Portraits, opened in 1983 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Musee des arts contemporain and 49th Parallel Gallery in NY. Cohn's experimental non-fiction feature, Quartet for Deafblind (1986), was selected for Dokumenta 8 in Kassel, Germany. Winner of a 1990 Guggenheim Fellowship to assist his work in Igloolik with Kunuk, Cohn was co-winner with Kunuk of the 1994 Bell Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Video Art. Most recently, Kunuk, Cohn and the 30-year ISUMA media art group were selected to represent Canada in the 2019 Venice Biennale, presenting My Father's Land and their newest feature, One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, to over 300,000 visitors to the Canada Pavilion in Venice from May through November 2019.