Arctic Contours: Northern Media, Canada and the Anthropocene

• Main Author: Victor, Carmen Julie
• Other Authors: Marchessault, Janine Michele
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Art criticism; Arctic cinema; Circumpolar north; Media; Communications; Anthropocene; Film; Contemporary art; Ecozoic; Arctic; Canada; Climate change
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10315/39039

This dissertation is an analysis of imagery of the Canadian North which examines the geopolitics of landscape in light of climate change discourse. By bringing together a series of historical and contemporary works in distinct media, this project builds upon the geopolitics of representation and interrogates an ideology of visual media of the North as informed by traces of colonial relations. While the term 'Arctic' assumes a homogeneity that is not present in reality, dominant notions to that effect persist in popular and political culture, and thus it remains a discrete category. Although notions of the North and the Arctic assume a unifying singularity, the works considered here present counter-histories that reveal the complexity of Arctic representation in which aesthetic, cultural, and political interests become intertwined. These interrelations are articulated through a methodological analysis over three chapters, each representing a 'contour,' which consider aspects of Arctic representation in such a way that does not ignore systemic histories and processes of dispossession. Contours serve as a metaphor for discussing these distinct areas of inquiry by indicating permeable boundaries but not necessarily delineating a hermetically resolved whole. The first contour: in seeking to articulate Indigenous self-representation, certain historically situated, time-based, and lens-based media inform this project as ur-texts and are regarded as foundational; however, as proto-documentaries and early experiments in the medium of film, these early representations of the North serve as a basis from which Indigenous cultures reclaim media and come to self-represent unassailable culture and inalienable land. In examining how visual culture is implicated in practices of viewing and representing the circumpolar north, Indigenous perspectives remain front and center in representing non-extractive relations to land. The second contour engages with the production, circulation and interpretation of fictionalized images as key ...