Qivittoq: Subjugated Knowledge in Colonialist Contexts

Research on Greenlandic mythological beings populating the remote and uninhabited areas of the country - qivittoq - leads to a deep dive into the dynamics between colonizers and the colonized. Through interviews with both Greenlanders and non-Greenlanders the research prepared its ground for further investigation through artistic means. Listening after centuries of silencing and then reporting on it turning it into a productive mechanism testifying to the repressed. Qivittoq as a topic surrounded by various kinds of silences is scrutinized through auto-ethnographic and visual means which converge in a vision of a constantly evolving and resisting phenomenon of qivittut.

The Western rationalist perspective on qivittut (plural of qivittoq) risks categorizing encoutners with these beings as disruptions in bodily self-perception as a result of a prolonged exposure to either extreme or montonous conditions. It is, thus, using science to present qivittut as mere halluciantions. The Greenlandic narratives explain qivittut as former humans who escaped their community after a severe rupture (anger, shame, disagreement etc.) In isolation they turned into immortal beings endowed with superpowers. Encounters with them are to be avoided. The concept of qivittoq is a persisting element of Greenlandic culture, it is still being preserved in the consciousness of Greenlanders, although, going qivittoq is an extinct practice. With colonization it has been prohibited. However, the contemporary schisms in societies give rise to new qivittut not only from Greenland, populating the conutry's remote areas. In the context of current attempts to colonize Greenland qivittoq - "a state that constantly changes with time and place" in the words of the Greenlandic artist Jessie Kleemann - seems to take on new forms.