Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld, 2016
© Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld, 2016 Photo/ Lise Autogena & Joshua Portway Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld, 2016
Lise Autogena and Joshua Portway’s film Kuannersuit; Kvanefjeld is a work in-progress, forming the first part of the artists’ long-term investigation into the conflicts facing the small, mostly indigenous, community of Narsaq in southern Greenland. Narsaq is located next to the pristine Kvanefjeld mountain; site of one of the richest rare earth mineral resources deposits in the world, and one of the largest sources of uranium.
Greenland is a former colony of Denmark, which is now recognised as an “autonomous administrative division” of Denmark, supported economically by the Danish state. Many people see exploitation of mineral deposits as the only viable route to full independence.
For generations the farming near Kvanefjeld has been Greenland’s only agricultural industry. This way of life may soon be threatened, as Greenland considers an open pit mine proposed by Greenland Minerals and Energy, an Australian company. The mine would be the fifth-largest uranium mine and second-biggest rare earth extraction operation in the world.
Autogena and Portway’s film portrays a community divided on the issue of uranium mining. It explores the difficult decisions and trade-offs faced by a culture seeking to escape a colonial past and define its own identity in a globalised world.
Lise Autogena (DK) and Joshua Portway (UK)
°1964 and °1967
Lise Autogena en Joshua Portway have worked together since the early 90s. Using custom-built technologies, real-time data and video, they have developed large-scale installations, site-specific works and performances. Their most recent projects have explored parallels between the regulatory systems of plant growth and city planning: Growing Cities Like Plants, 2016. Financial belief systems and the naturalisation of finance: Black Shoals; Dark Matter: 2015/16 and Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium, 2000-2004. Suicidal patterns in ant behaviour: Untitled: superorganism, 2014/15 and finding the worlds bluest sky: Most Blue Skies: 2006. In 2013 they developed Foghorn Requiem - a requiem for a disappearing sound, which was performed by Souter Lighthouse foghorn, three brass bands and fifty ships on the North Sea. Lise Autogena is a Professor of Cross-Disciplinary Art at the Cultural Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI) at Sheffield Hallam University.
Supported by Arts Council England/ British Council, Danish Arts Council, Sheffield Hallam University Art and Design Research Centre and The National Academies Keck Futures Initiative.
