Discussion event
Admission free, registration requested
Venue
Embassy of Canada – Marshall McLuhan Salon
to the tickets
TARTUPALUK (PROTOTYPE) is a virtual reality experience during which users are invited to visit the imaginary Republic of Tartupaluk (“looking like a kidney”). Starring director Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory as the larger-than-life, newly inaugurated President of the Republic, the work blends 360 live-action video, motion-capture animation, and VFX to bring to life a poetic, sometimes humorous Inuit utopia set in this barren, uninhabited 1.3 sq km island within the territorial waters of both Canada and Greenland. Having been the subject of real-life, decades-old economic and political disputes between Ottawa and Copenhagen, Tartupaluk is thus completely re-imagined in Laakkuluk’s visionary extravaganza.
Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory is a multi-award-winning Inuk artist, using uaajeerneq (Greenlandic mask dancing), poetry, theater, film, and performance art to tackle topics ranging from colonization, sexuality, intergenerational strength, fear, boundaries, and love. She often collaborates with friend and colleague Jamie Griffiths. Their recent collaborative works include TIMIGA NUNALU, SIKULU (My body, the land and the ice, 2016) for the touring exhibition “#CallResponse” and SILAUP PUTUNGA (2018), a film installation acquired by the Art Gallery of Ontario. Laakkuluk lives with her family in Iqaluit, Nunavut.
Maderated by Kerry Swanson (Indigenous Screen Office)