Greenland Workshop 2023

Location:
Ittoqqortoormiit

Date:
June-July 2023 *

Duration:
10 days

Cost:
600€

Partecipants:
Max 6 people

* the exact period will be defined according to the partecipant needs

Submission deadline Feb 28, 2023 – piercasotti@gmail.com

This edition of the workshop will be hold in Ittoqqortoormiit, the most extreme village of the east coast.
This intensive 10 day workshop is mainly aimed to emerging photographers. Its goal is to provide the participants with the main tools to build a photographic project and develop each participant’s own and unique personal vision.

This workshop will encourage students to explore their emotional horizons and its ultimate goal is to nurture and feed each student’s own unique photographic vision as much as possible. Photography will be addressed as a way to tell stories through our intimate feelings, trying to explore the essential elements that make photography as closest to a “personal portrait” as possible. This approach is never riskless, but absolutely stimulating. There will be group classes where we will review students daily images and address global issues and subjects but also personal sessions with every student are provided. We will try to go beyond a simplistic didascalic description of the subject, trying to depict a community and the surrounding merciless environment through our instincts, fears and joy.

The course will explain how to construct and develop a photographic project. Some of the aims will be to search for a personal artistic style and students will be required to develop individual projects that will be examined and analysed daily, correcting the weak points and emphasizing the strong points. The pictures taken will be revised daily focusing on the aspects of visual narration/editing and aiming to build a solid, coherent, stunning portfolio by the end of the workshop.

Here’s TWO BOOKS that have been made by photographers Els Martens and Sandrine Cnudde right after the completion of the 2017 WORKSHOP:
DANS LA GUEULE DU CIEL, Sandrine Cnudde – LIGHT MOTIV EDITION 2018
STEK, Els Martens – ARTPAPER EDITIONS 2018

Arctic Spleen short film

ARCTIC SPLEEN - short film (2010)

Play Video

Arctic Spleen is a personal intimate journey inside the Greenlandic juvenile world where nature, violence, boredom and a strong cultural legacy have been claiming for decades hundreds of young lives. In East Greenland, 20% of young people aged between 15 and 25 try to end their lives every year. 2% of them succeed.

Winner

Ozu Short Film Festival 2011

Best short Documentary – PDN 2011

Best of the Web – Los Angeles Times 2011

 

Official Selection

Rai Film Festival 2011

Festival CinemAmbiente 2011

Skepto Short International Film Festival 2012

Visioni Italiane Film Festival 2012

Sometimes I cannot smile

Sometime I cannot smile

An intimate, personal journey into the greenlandic juvenile world where nature, boredom, violence and a strong cultural legacy have been claiming for decades the highest and saddest “toll”. That of hundreds of young lives.

Greenland has the highest suicide rate among young people. Almost twenty percent of them attempt to end their lives every year. Two percent succeed.

It’s a far journey to Greenland. Up there our conception of life and death shakes, priorities are inverted, elements shuffled. A fatalist, dichotomous approach to life. Black or white, without shades in between, raw and cruel.

It’s about surviving, often psychological.

A delicate exploration of the subtle and intimate war many young people fight against violence, boredom and emptiness, a struggle that has always been the “raison d’etre” of young generations, the difference being that in east greenland many of them lose that battle.

Travellers

Travellers

Scenes from Kulusuk airport

(Italian at the bottom)

Kulusuk, July 22nd 2016

The profanation of innocence. Dressed alike human beings walk down the boarding ladder, dazed, protected by digital glasses. The TV, the gate in which reality resides and lives, the house screen materialized here, moved through tablet screens or digital cameras.

Anything, as long as you don’t use your eyes.

The screen that reassures and protects from the unknown and the wild, the passepartout to an alibi for an invasion (without any fault), to a world made of different human beings.

The certainty (at least two years on-site) that the far earth will always be impressed through layers of silicon that manifest themselves as small spots, or rather through tiny, digital squares that create reality; they don’t replace it: on the contrary, they become IT.

Mind, brain, human tools: they’re not useful anymore. Now you don’t have to face anything without the help of protection and emotional filters anymore.

You have to take note, NOT live the moment; you have to leave a trace, have to have been here or there — this is essential. A supermarket of prêt-à-porter, disposable adventures that rise and fall like fashion seasons: evanescent and dangerously temporary.

All of this, these thoughts and maybe something else, all of this came to my mind in a split second. Everything that I’ve seen scares me. And maybe, even more so the future developments that are inevitable, by now. Human pollution, the clear perception of indifference through which these bodies get airborne (often without their critical, sensorial knowledge) and face these ‘holy’, pure, innocent, solitary, placid lands. Lands that demand silence, patience, whispers, and not shouts. Thoughts, rather than words.

It’s inevitable, and the last chapter of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World appears before my eyes with the striking force of a thunderbolt. The concept of helicopters packed with curious ALPHA citizens, conformed to preordained life and thoughts, citizens who want to see John “the Savage”, who’s been taken away from the Indian reservation as an experiment of “civilization”; John, who only claimed the right to poetry, kindness, sin, true danger… the right to “be unhappy”, according to Controller Mustapha.

I hate civilization,” he said before taking shelter in a lighthouse “… it poisoned me.”

I wonder what took — and keeps taking — here, to the end of the world, in Eastern Greenland, shapeless, mononucleical groups of Chinese people, if not an awkward attempt of westernization (a self/new cultural revolution). Something that doesn’t belong to them, but that they do because they saw western people do it, hence they repeat it (aseptically, uncritically).

A new souvenir, an X on the world map — digital —, the strength of a post, a selfie on Facebook. Everything lasts a moment, those few, necessary seconds you need to look at a picture, a like, and then the oblivion or vague remembrances of something that were maybe a pleasant memory.

Or, perhaps, the revenge of the subconscious toward the other half of humanity (“for the cultural revolution wasn’t that bad! It made us free and threw us into the world”), a sense of inferiority on a unconscious level (“See, this revolution didn’t destroy us”) that must be proved wrong.

Women, in their little walking hats that seem to have come out of some mall and are coordinated with hi-tech clothes normally proposed by shop assistants for 8000–meter heights (but here, in summer, you usually walk around wearing light pile, jeans and shoes (I agree only if they’re trekking shoes), they become animated and hysterical all of a sudden, after finding out about the most important proof of belonging. They stand in line in order to get the Greenland stamp on their passport: mass neuronal hysteria while they board, for that stamp will cause so much envy once back home, during their suppers accompanied by projections on wide plasma screens — it would be even better if they were curved.

I must confess: for one moment, I’ve wanted that stamp on my passport as well, maybe because I was drawn to that magnetizing mass energy, like a magnetic force that takes you to comradeship and conformation. I’ve thought about it, I’ve craved it for some seconds; then I’ve recovered and quickly left the gate in order to stop my regrets. If you want something to exist, you have to prove it. It mustn’t exist for you, but for the others.

Icebergs, like migrants, like ships, like satellites nobody can guide to the unknown, deep space anymore; they venture into the open sea, into the black, dangerous waters, alone; they slowly melt, without screaming, resigned, with a whisper, without bothering, even before catching sight of the Icelandic shoreline.

Surrounded by indifference, toward an eternal oblivion.

Earth to earth, water to water.

Aakkunnaarpoq – (v) not to melt anymore, not to bleed anymore.

Kulusuk, 22 luglio 2016

Profanazione dell’innocenza. Esseri umani vestiti tutti uguali scendono imbambolati la scaletta dell’aereo, protetti da occhi digitali. La TV, il gate nel quale risiede e vive la realtà, lo schermo di casa qui materializzato, traslato attraverso schermi di tablet o camere digitali.

Tutto, basta non usare i propri occhi.

Lo schermo che rassicura e protegge dall’ignoto e dal selvaggio, il passepartout a un alibi per un’invasione (senza colpa), a un mondo di umani diversi.

La garanzia (almeno due anni on-site) di avere impressa per sempre la terra lontana attraverso strati di silicio che si manifestano in puntini, anzi minuscoli quadratini digitali che creano la realtà, non la sostituiscono ma diventano essi stessi LA realtà.

Non servono più la mente, il cervello, gli utensili umanistici. Ora non occorre affrontare più nulla sprovvisti di protezione e filtri emozionali.

Occorre registrare, NON vivere il momento. Bisogna, si rivela essenziale, lasciare una traccia (di essere stati qua o là). Un supermarket dell’avventura prêt-à-porter usa e getta, che fluttua come le stagioni di moda, evanescenti e pericolosamente transitorie.

Tutto ciò – questi pensieri e forse altro – è passato nella mia mente in una frazione di secondo. Tutto ciò che ho visto mi spaventa. E forse ancor di più gli sviluppi futuri, ormai inevitabili. L’inquinamento umano, la chiara percezione dell’indifferenza con cui questi corpi vengono aviotrasportati (spesso a loro critica insaputa sensoriale) e affrontano queste terre “sacre”, pure, innocenti, solitarie e pacate. Terre che esigono silenzio, pazienza, sussurri e non urla, pensieri più che parole.È inevitabile, e con la forza d’urto di un fulmine mi si materializza davanti agli occhi il capitolo finale de Il mondo nuovo di Aldous Huxley. L’immagine di elicotteri stipati di curiosi cittadini ALFA, omologati in una vita e pensieri preordinati, che vogliono vedere John “il selvaggio”, prelevato dalla riserva indiana per un esperimento di “civilizzazione”; John, che reclamava solamente il diritto alla poesia, alla bontà, al peccato, al pericolo vero… il diritto «di essere infelice» secondo il “controllore” Mustafa.

«Odio la civiltà» – disse prima di rifugiarsi in un faro – «… mi ha avvelenato».

Mi chiedo cosa può aver portato, e sempre più portare, gruppi informi mononucleici di cinesi qui, alla fine del mondo, nella Groenlandia dell’est, se non un goffo tentativo di processo di occidentalizzazione (un’auto/nuova rivoluzione culturale). Fare qualcosa che probabilmente non appartiene loro, ma che hanno visto fare all’occidente e quindi da ripetere (asetticamente, acriticamente).

Un nuovo souvenir, una X sul mappamondo – digitale – la forza di un post, di un selfie su Facebook. Tutto dura un attimo, quei pochi secondi necessari a guardare una fotografia, un like, e poi l’oblio o vaghe memorie di qualcosa che forse era ricordo piacevole.

O forse una rivincita del subconscio nei confronti dell’altra metà dell’umanità («che la rivoluzione culturale non è stata poi così male! Ci ha resi liberi e proiettati nel mondo»), un senso di inferiorità diffusa a livello inconscio («vedete, la rivoluzione non ci ha distrutto») che bisogna dimostrare errata.

Le donne, con cappellini da passeggio da centro commerciale abbinati ad abbigliamenti hi-tech normalmente proposti dai commessi per cime di 8.000 metri (ma qui d’estate si gira con pile leggero, jeans e scarpe – quelle le concedo da trekking) si animano improvvisamente, isteriche, dopo aver scoperto la più importante delle prove di appartenenza. Fanno la fila per avere il timbro della Groenlandia sul passaporto. Isteria neuronale di massa durante l’imbarco, quanta invidia potrà suscitare un timbro al ritorno a casa, durante le cene con proiezioni su maxi schermi al plasma – meglio se ricurvi.

Lo ammetto, il timbro sul passaporto l’ho voluto anch’io per un momento, forse attirato da quella calamitante energia di massa, come una forza magnetica che ti porta al cameratismo e alla conformazione. L’ho pensato, l’ho desiderato per alcuni secondi, poi, ripresomi, sono uscito dal gate velocemente per non avere più rimpianti. Affinché qualcosa esista, occorre una prova da mostrare. Non deve esistere per te, ma per gli altri.

Iceberg, come migranti, come navi, come satelliti lasciati senza più guida all’ignoto spazio profondo, si avventurano solitari al largo nelle acque nere e insidiose; si sciolgono lentamente, senza urlare, rassegnati, con un sussurro, senza disturbare, prima ancora della vista della costa islandese.

Tra l’indifferenza, verso un oblio eterno.

Terra alla terra, acqua all’acqua.

Aakkunnaarpoq – (v) not to melt anymore, not to bleed anymore.

Greenland untitled#1

GREENLAND UNTITLED#1 (2011)

Director // Piergiorgio Casotti

Text // Piergiorgio Casotti

Arctic Spleen

ARCTIC SPLEEN (2014)

Arctic Spleen is a personal intimate journey inside the Greenlandic juvenile world where nature, violence, boredom and a strong cultural legacy have been claiming for decades hundreds of young lives. In East Greenland, 20% of young people aged between 15 and 25 try to end their lives every year. 2% of them succeed. The personal experiences of Ole, Elvira, Hans and Kaleraaq, who survived several attempts, are not single isolated stories but the mirror of the fears of a huge part of young Greenlanders inclined to commit suicide.

Winner

Best Documentary – 17th Genova Film Festival, 2015

“Premio Corso Salani” – Trieste Film Festival, 2013

Official Selection

American Doc Film Festival – Palm Springs (2015)

3rd Lugano Film Festival (2014)

5th Manya Human Rights International Film Festival – Uganda (2014)

10th Frozen River Film Festival – Winona (2015)