by Karukinka | Aug 2, 2024 | Artistic news, Indigenous peoples, Karukinka, Patagonian Channels, Yagan/Yamana
If you plan to go stop at La Rochelle this summer, don’t miss this trip to the end of the world! This sound and immersive fiction was created by Sébastien Laurier in collaboration with the Phare du bout du monde (Lighthouse of the end of the world) association and the town of La Rochelle: for one hour, you are transported into the far south of Patagonia, from the post-office of the tip of the Minimes harbour.
Several members of the Karukinka association took part in this project, among whom Mirtha Salamanca (Selk’nam woman, member of the Argentinian indigenous participative board), voiced in French by Marie-Pierre Lemasson, cash-flow manager of the association, who’s known by Mirtha since 2019 when she first came to France under the project Haizebegi. Indeed, our main protagonist, Lauriane, finds echo in Karukinka’s founder…
If you want to find out more and prepare your teleportation into the Land of Fire and the south canals of Magellan Strait, you can go to the page dedicated to La Rochelle tourism office (https://www.larochelle-tourisme.com/a-faire/activites-de-loisirs/activites-de-loisirs-outdoor/voyage-au-bout-du-monde-une-fiction-sonore) and the website of the Phare du bout du monde association (https://lephareduboutdumonde.com).
And if you wish to go further, come with us to visit the “real” lighthouse of the end of the world next winter and spring (North Spring!) (February-April 2025) onboard the association’s sailing ship: the Milagro. More information on: https://karukinka-exploration.com/patagonie-2025/
by Karukinka | Feb 4, 2024 | Indigenous peoples, Artistic news, Selk'nam/Ona
Through travelling light projection, Corporation Traitraico and Delight Lab artists help highlight the depossession history of the Selk’nam people and the fight for their recognition and repair.
Translated from Spanish – Article from the El Mostrador newspaper (Chile)
A light art piece travelled through the Chilean South Patagonia to shine light on the recognition and repair of the Selk’nam people.
The Selk’nam people has been indigenous to Patagonia for thousands of years. During colonization, they suffered persecution, murder, rape and hostage to be shown in European human zoos. The Church banished them and forced them to abandon their culture; and the Chilean State did not recognize them as subjects to rights and later even considered the culture as extinct.
Thanks to two decades of fight, the Chilean Congress finally approved, in September 2023, bill 19.253 for the State to recognize the Selk’nam as an Indigenous people and its culture as living, adding them to the list of other ethnic groups such as Mapuche and Aimara.
« We will now be able to promote our culture more heavily. We need a political presence, and laws to protect our heritage because we suffer from a lot of cultural appropriation. It is the responsibility of the State to repair, through education, the content that is taught today and that leave the Selk’nam people for dead”, says Mauricio Astroza, young Selk’nam individual and member of the Telkacher Assembly.
To help remember, highlight and support the people, cultural and environmental organization Corporation Traitraico and video projection team Delight Lab have gathered the testimonials of Selk’nam individuals from Chile and Argentina and projected them, using their territory as a background.
The projections are part of the “Relatos de Luz” (Stories of Light) project started in 2019 and that travels through the Southern territories. The team also went to Los Lagos, Aysén, Los Ríos et La Araucanía.
The project was made possible thanks to the 2021 Regional Artistic Fund for the Culture of the Native Peoples of the Magallanes Region and Chilean Antarctica; the National Arts Foundations; the Visual Arts and Creation and Production; the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. The Telkacher Assembly, Bandera Selk’nam, the Selk’nam Language Academy, the Selk’nam Women Group Khol Hool Na from the Lola Kjepja Lineage and representants of the Rafaela Ishton Indigenous community also help support the initiative.
https://www.elmostrador.cl/cultura/2024/02/02/obra-luminica-por-el-reconocimiento-y-la-reparacion-del-pueblo-selknam
by Karukinka | Aug 14, 2018 | Artistic news
Summertime is for road trips. Atlas Obscura and All Things Considered are traveling up the West Coast, from California to Washington, in search of “hidden wonders” — unique but overlooked people and places.
It’s a little before 5:00 on a summer morning, and Matt Mikkelsen stands not so far down a trail in the Hoh Rain Forest in Washington’s Olympic National Park. In the dense forest, dominated by massive Sitka spruce trees dripping with tangles of moss, Mikkelsen has just set up a tripod, topped not with a camera but with a disembodied black foam head.
The head is actually an unusual microphone — which Mikkelsen lovingly refers to as “Fritz” — and he is using it to record the dawn chorus, the time when the forest wakes, and the chirps and hiccups of the night give way to the trilling, ecstatic reveille of the rain forest’s birds. (To fully experience what this sounds like, listen to the audio version of this story — available above — using earbuds.)
Mikkelsen, an audio technician and recording specialist, works with a nonprofit called One Square Inch of Silence, founded by his mentor, audio ecologist Gordon Hempton. Its purpose is to promote the preservation of quiet places — that is, places without human-made sounds.
Protecting wilderness, they argue, means more than guarding against development and industry, but also keeping spaces free of noise pollution — including the sound of aircraft far overhead — that can affect the people who visit these places and the wildlife that calls them home.
In 2005, when Hempton founded One Square Inch of Silence, he designated a spot, a few miles up the Hoh River Trail into the rain forest, the quietest place in the U.S. and marked it with a small, red stone.
Mikkelsen, 24, is tall and slim, with a long auburn beard. His friends call him “Sasquatch,” but that doesn’t seem to suit his gentle, quiet demeanor.
“Even though protecting 1 square inch seems like a very small, insignificant amount of space,” he explains, “due to the nature of sound and silence, it’s preserving this whole ecosystem.”
If that inch stays quiet, that means that the entire valley, and miles around it, will be similarly intact and free of intrusive noise. Hempton defines a naturally quiet place as one where there are 15 minutes of non-human-made sound. He estimates that there are fewer than 10 such places in the U.S.
As Mikkelsen adjusts the sensitivity of his recording, the dawn chorus seems to explode around the valley.
“In a forest like this, it’s so dense, I can only see maybe 50 yards in one direction, if you’re lucky,” he says. “But I can hear for miles.”
That sense, of how far you can hear, is known as your auditory horizon, and much of the time — indoors or in a city, for example — it doesn’t extend very far. But in the forest, with eyes closed and a little focus, it sprawls.
“In a place like this your auditory horizon isn’t just 1 or 2 miles,” he says. “You can hear everything that’s happening in this valley. … It’s like we’re listening to 5 miles or 10 miles around us right now. It’s crazy.”
Mikkelsen then offers headphones connected to Fritz, so visitors can hear what Fritz’s hypersensitive ears are picking up. The sensation is more than mere amplification, because you can still perceive the direction and distance of each twitter and rustle, thanks to Fritz’s ears.
“When you listen to it through a microphone system like this,” he says, “you all of a sudden realize that you’re listening to hundreds, if not thousands, of birds.”
It’s like your own hearing, enhanced to an impossibly intimate level.
But since One Square Inch of Silence was established, the Hoh Rain Forest has gotten louder, through increased air traffic and the testing of loud Navy jets nearby.
Now, Hempton and Mikkelsen are planning to make One Square Inch part of a larger effort to identify, designate and protect quiet places like it around the world.
“Just the fact that this place exists is enough to give me hope for the world,” Mikkelsen says, softly. “And I think that’s the reason why we conserve wilderness in the first place.”
Samir S. Patel is deputy editor of Atlas Obscura.
Maureen Pao edited the Web story. Dylan Thuras, a founder of Atlas Obscura, Matt Ozug, Renita Jablonski and Michael May reported, produced and edited the audio story.
Copyright 2018 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.
9(MDAzMTY3NDM2MDEyMzYyODg4ODVhMjM5Ng001) "Are You Listening? Hear What Uninterrupted Silence Sounds Like (OPB Samir S. Patel) 2")
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