Dance duo Bicep have been talking about their new soundtrack project, which involved travelling to Greenland and recording with Inuit musicians.
The soundtrack accompanies an immersive installation called Takkuuk, which premieres at Outernet in London tomorrow (July 3). The film explores the lives, communities and challenges that artists face in the Arctic region.
As one half of the duo Andy Ferguson explains in a feature in today’s Guardian, the project also involved him sampling the noises from the gradually melting huge ice sheet at the centre of the country. Inevitably, the idea is to draw attention to the current climate emergency. “Everyone comes back changed,” he said. “Seeing first-hand climate change happening like this.”
Ferguson initially returned from Greenland with samples and field recordings which the duo sent to the indigenous artists that they met. Those artists sent back full songs to Bicep, at which point the duo realised: “We needed to step back and not be the focal point... it became clear this needed to be us shining a light on them.”
There is a rather cringy tradition of pop stars travelling to the frozen north to ‘draw attention’ to climate change. Think of the somewhat ludicrous Cape Farewell project of 2008 that saw 45 artists, including Jarvis Cocker, Marcus Brigstocke and Leslie Feist take a voyage into the Arctic Ocean in the hope that it would elicit a ‘cultural response’ via their art. But Bicep’s motives seem more honest than most, in genuinely wanting to shine a light on the artists of this small community on the world’s largest island.
One of Bicep’s collaborators, Charlotte Qamaniq from the duo Silla, summed up the purpose of Takkuuk neatly: “The Arctic climate is changing rapidly so in the context of the project it’s: ‘look, the adverse effects of climate change are obvious.’ But it’s also: ‘hey, look how cool Inuit culture is!’”
Meanwhile, Ferguson said: “If it starts people on a journey to learn more about Greenland then it’s achieved something.”
“It’s easy to switch off with climate change, I switch off myself sometimes,” he continued. “But if you start telling the story in different ways, different narratives, ways people can visualise it, at least it’s a start. Because for the next generation it’s going to be the focal part of their life.”
