Artists :: Nunatinnit Nomadic Media Lab
Live from the Tundra (Canada, 2001)
http://www.nunatinnit.net

With the aid of the latest satellite telephone and mobile computing technologies, Arnait Video Productions has created a dynamic website which will permit a small team of Inuit and Quebecois participants at a remote outpost camp on Baffin Island to create a daily journal of their experiences, tell oral histories, host special events, and interact with the outside world.
During summer 2000, Arnait Video Productions filmed the daily life and the stories of the Kunuk family for a documentary video entitled Anana (Mother). Live from the Tundra jumps off where Anana left off, and allows internauts around the world to visit the Kunuk family at their outpost camp and learn about a culture and a lifestyle that is known to very few people on the planet. Not many people in Canada, or in the world for that matter, posses the knowledge, skills and experiences that Vivi and Enuki Kunuk have cultivated in the unique environment of Canada's Eastern Arctic.

Inuit culture is profoundly tied to the land of its people: the stories and knowledge Vivi and Enuki Kunuk possess are completely unique to this region. The land - the tundra - is the source of Inuit people's stories and history. Yet in their deep humanity, these stories are infused with universality.

Media producers in Igloolik can and want to maintain their presence on the land. They want to explore the creative possibilities of nomadic living, all while employing sophisticated communication technologies to remain wired to the 21st century. Living and travelling on the land, project participants carry out media work from the Nomadic Media Lab, a portable, insulated dome tent located at the Kunuk family's summer outpost camp. The site enables visitors to the website to follow the Kunuk family in its nomadic rhythms of hunting, travelling and camping.

Biography

The goal of Arnait Video Productions (formerly Arnait Ikkajurtigiit - Women's Video Workshop of Igloolik) is to value the voices of Inuit women in debates of interest to all Canadians. How does one experience the dawning of the third millennium in a small Inuit community which is in the midst of political and social change?

Since its beginnings in 1991, Arnait Video Productions (Women's Video Workshop of Igloolik), has traced a trajectory revealing the originality of its producers, the context of their work and lives, as well as their strong desire to express cultural values unique in Canada.

Working in difficult social conditions (through community and family problems as well as precarious financial situations), the sheer endurance required on the part of the women in the Workshop to produce these videos and Internet projects, testifies to the importance of media-making in their lives.