Sirmilik, geographical experience, and the question of landscape

• Main Author: Wilson, Samantha
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Masaryk University 2014
• Subjects: Zacharias Kunuk; Canadian National Parks Project; cultural geography; landscape aesthetics; phenomenology; Arctic
• Online Access: https://journals.phil.muni.cz/bse/article/view/21753

Traditional landscape aesthetics, featured in geography and the fine arts, privilege a form of distance firmly attached to the gaze of the European colonial. This conceptualization of space has been strongly criticized and has recently been overshadowed in academia by an emphasis on a multisensory form of embodied experience. In contrast to this shift of emphasis, Martin Heidegger placed traditional structures of contemplation alongside an embodied process when accounting for our relationship to landscape and space. Zacharias Kunuk emphasizes this problematization from the indigenous point of view in his latest short film, Sirmilik (2011). In the film he challenges the notion that one form of experience can be separated from the other when considering the arctic landscape. Traditional landscape aesthetics, featured in geography and the fine arts, privilege a form of distance firmly attached to the gaze of the European colonial. This conceptualization of space has been strongly criticized and has recently been overshadowed in academia by an emphasis on a multisensory form of embodied experience. In contrast to this shift of emphasis, Martin Heidegger placed traditional structures of contemplation alongside an embodied process when accounting for our relationship to landscape and space. Zacharias Kunuk emphasizes this problematization from the indigenous point of view in his latest short film, Sirmilik (2011). In the film he challenges the notion that one form of experience can be separated from the other when considering the arctic landscape.