Presentation of initial idea
Inuit culture
With my Idea being all about a culture that I'm not personally involved with, I feel a big responsibility to understand what their culture involves especially surrounding their creative arts such as paintings.
The Inuit culture is creative in many ways, one way I have found very interesting, is their old art of tattoo's. Most commonly found on the females, it was a way for them to "Feel a sense of identity, strength and beauty". This art has found itself resurfacing in modern day Inuit societies that find a peace in reconnecting to their old arts.They use more modern tools but their methods are still the same. These include skin poking; dipping a needle in ink and piercing the ink into the skin. And skin stitching; stitching coloured string through the skin to make patterns. These tattoos can be incredibly important to their culture, Inuit women would all receive a chin tattoo as part of becoming a woman. It indicates their "Coming of age" (Great Big Story,2016).
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Cave art
Cave Paintings are a creative practice by ancient peoples all across the world. In Europe, these paintings span from 40 thousand years ago, to ten thousand years ago. However, I'm studying the North American Inuits and they are a far more recent culture due to America being a relatively new land to humans. The Native Americans; to our knowledge, made cave paintings from around 500 to 900 years ago commonly (Smith, M 2013). Rare occasions however there have been discoveries of some up to 6 thousand years old. Whats interesting about this is the idea that specific symbols were found painted all over the world. Lots of them reoccurring from Canada all the way to Australia. This has brought people to believe the paintings are something deeply ingrained in human psychology and the development of the mind. Genevieve von Petzinger leads her own research into this and made a ted talk about her en devours to find what communication was trying to be achieved through the creation of cave paintings. However, despite all of her findings of reoccurring symbols she couldn't work out any kind of communication that the art was portraying. Her belief that this art was trying to communicate something was because many cave paintings, aren't just animals and humans, many are simple geometric shapes. To her this meant that there was clearly a meaning to these shapes and symbols that kept popping up (Petzinger, G 2015).
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Inuit Mythology
The Inuits passed on much of their culture through word of mouth, that would be handed down for many generations. These stories would obviously receive embellishment and changes, however the general premise and moral of the story would be told either way. It is passed on through the Elders of a tribe to enlighten the young. Some carvings and paintings would be used to back up these stories while they were being told. Also, some stories were sung, especially by the women in a tribe. This was because the women would have much more spare time while the men were hunting. The stories they tell are thought provoking. Fundamentally these all have their roots in shamanism. Which is a whole other part of the Inuit culture, but influences almost all aspects of their lives. There is a belief in multiple worlds. Mainly they believe there is another world mirroring their own, this is the spirit world. They do rituals to make sure spirits make their way into the spirit world.This includes returning animal intestines to the water they fished them from. Nunavut Animation Lab: Lumaajuuq, this animation shows the story of a child getting revenge on their mother for blinding them by killing them, this eventually proves to be a loop of revenge causing more suffering and the only antidote being forgiveness. As you can tell this is a strange story to tell to get the message across that you shouldn't be vengeful ( Huston, J, Parrott, Z .2015)
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Influences on fmp
With all these things to think about, I'm aware that if I want to tell a story, faithfully through an Inuit character; It will suit best an Elder Shaman. It is very clear that they are the story tellers of the Inuit culture. Perhaps I could even research the specific kind of facial tattoos that would be involved. In terms of the story I will want to be telling, I wont be using a story that already exists within the culture. This is because I wouldn't want to miss understand the story and its meaning, however I will be using the structures of the story to base mine around. They always aim to teach a moral lesson. I would like mine to be a "lesson" on the importance of art in cultures. The fact that there is no real understanding towards what symbols and patterns found in Inuit cave art might mean, is an interesting idea to me. Perhaps people look too deep into these kinds of paintings. Is there really a way to know why, or what someone was thinking when painting those shapes. Obviously there are paintings of things we do understand; animals and people. But why do researchers like to think there is a secret behind the ones we don't understand? Perhaps this is just something we aren't meant to, or can't understand? Or perhaps its even simpler than that; it might just be a doodle. While that sounds anti climactic, its important to remember that art was not really a concept. They had no artists to take inspiration, no one to teach them. The only inspiration could've been the real world or their imagination.
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