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Energies, Sound & Artistic Research in Times of Climate Change in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)

Guest Lecture by Ania Mauruschat at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, Australia.


Date: Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 16:00 - 18:00

Location: H.L. Rogers Room (N397) in the John Woolley Building of the University of Sydney. Enter via the main entrance at Science Road, and turn right. On this corridor, the Rogers room is the last room on the right.

All are welcome. Due to limited space capacity, please register in advance by writing to ania.mauruschat@hum.ku.dk


Inuk Silis Høegh. Photo: Ania Mauruschat

In the land art project The Green Land the Greenlandic visual artist and filmmaker Inuk Silis Høegh together with his colleague, the Danish sound artist Jacob Kierkegaard, explores the pristine landscape and environment of Kalaallit Nunnat (Greenland) in times of climate change. The film consists of four stages, which each represent one of the four ancient elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Thus, the two artists investigate together "man’s intervention with nature at a time when global environmental issues are knocking on Greenland’s door like never before."


Julie Edel Hardenberg. Photo: Julie Edel Hardenberg

In contrast to their aesthetic approach stands the Julie Edel Hardenberg's methodology of artistically researching the

history of her homeland, a former colony of Denmark and the rapid changes it is going through in times of climate change. The Greenlandic visual and performance artist creates art works which drastically intervene in conventional concepts and perceptions of cultural, political and religious power structures. For example, her language project or the installation of the qilaat, the Inuit frame drum, in the prayer room of the newly built prison in Nuuk, address alternative Greenlandic energies to those the fossil fuel industry is so strongly interested in.

Community room of the new prison of Nuuk, desigend by Julie Edel Hardenberg. Photo: Julie Edel Hardenberg

Especially, Inuit drum dancing and singing, which were suppressed by Danish colonizers for around 300 years but were recognized nevertheless as UNESCO intangible cultural heritage in 2022, are strongly connected to the ancient Inuit concept of Sila and the collective energy of the heartbeat of the drum. Amongst others, the Inughuit story-teller, traditional Inuit singer, spiritual guide and shaman Hivshu, and the frame drum singer and dancer Anda Poulsen are committed to revitalizing the tradition of the qilaat. Thus, they try to reactivate a power source, which was essential for the Inuit to survive in the harsh climate of the Arctic island of Kalaallit Nunaat in the last 4000 years.

Markus E. Olsen and Anda Poulsen at the Nuuk cathedral on June 21. 2022. Photo: Unkown, Youtube collage

In her guest lecture, Ania Mauruschat will present and discuss core findings of her field research for the Sounding Crisis project in Kalaallit Nunaat in the summer of 2022. Exemplary, she will present different artworks and discuss the artistic practices, the energies and the sonic agency at stake in these art works and connected cultural practices.


Ania Mauruschat is a Copenhagen-based media studies scholar and lecturer, focussing on sound and radio. Trained as a journalist and as an editor and educated in the humanities and social sciences at Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (Germany), she worked from 2002 to 2012 full-time for public radio stations. From 2012 to 2014 she worked as a scientific assistant, lecturer, and project manager in media aesthetics at the University of Basel (Switzerland). 2018 to 2023 she was a member of the interdisciplinary Ph.D. lab (doctoral program) “Epistemologies of Artistic Practices” at the Collegium Helveticum in Zurich (Switzerland). The title of her Ph.D. is „Radiophonics, Noise & Understanding. Towards an Epistemology of Radio Art“ (University of Basel / Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland). From September 2021 to 2023 she is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoc Fellow within the Horizon Europe program of the European Commission. Her research project “Sounding Crisis. Sounds and Energies within Climate Change” is hosted at the Sound Studies Lab of the University of Copenhagen (Denmark).

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