Poet: Jessie Kleemann

Inimi / The Room by Jessie Kleemann

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Swoon (Marc Neys) has been taking a “‘videopoem journey’ along the Northern countries” this year, with films based on poems from Finland, Iceland, Sweden, and Norway. This one took him to Greenland, as he describes in a recent blog post.

With Inimi (The Room) from Jessie Kleemann I found the perfect (spooky) poem to play around with. Her reading on Lyrikline in Greenlandic was an extra bonus for me. […]

I started with creating a soundscape around her reading; [SoundCloud link]

After that I was driven by the overall atmosphere of the language and the pace of her reading to look for footage by Jan Eerala again.
His images of an abandoned shed, a pink plastic bag in the wind and some shadowy puddles worked well in contrast (split screen) with the blue spooky footage I created earlier this year (playing around with software and public domain material)

This marriage of Greenland, Finland and Belgium works rather well, I think.

Poem No. 6 by Jessie Kleemann

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Greenland poet Jessie Kleemann‘s text is voiced by Claire Wilkinson in a film by Diego Barraza (Chinoix) called Dolor ártico / Arctic Ache.

‘Arctic Ache’ is a video derived from ‘Poem Nº 6’, which is part of a series about climate change and its effects on the Arctic written by Greenlandic artist and poet Jessie Kleemann. In ‘Poem Nº 6’, the self appeals to reminiscences in search of wisdom to overcome a bleak and gloomy future; it is a voice that comes not from the hegemonic centre, but from the margins, proving that in those margins knowledge is also recreated and reflections are articulated by means of other imagery, that of the Greenlandic people. As glaciers melt and mundane desires shape politics, the poetic-self wonders if this is really her land. The video itself contrasts the present-day reality with a sense of place nestled in the memory of the poet. Images lead the mind to different places away from the spoken word and that combination conjures and evokes new meanings and creates another level of suggestion and interpretation.

The dancer is Alison Brewerton.