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Paper short abstract:

Inspired by the HANDMADE project, I contribute insight from using photography and film in Greenland to study how traditional kayak hunters align environmental awareness between generations. Perspectival imaging is used to explore the interdependence of body, environment, technology, and mind.

Paper long abstract:

For anthropologists, perspectival kinaesthetic imaging offers opportunity to access enactive and ecological dimensions of creativity. Inspired by the HANDMADE project, I contribute insight from using photography and film in Greenland to study how traditional kayak hunters align environmental awareness between generations. Hunters assert that there are forms of Inuit knowledge that can only be renewed through the physicality of the skill. To this end, they train for disorienting and dangerous scenarios such as a capsize, where plunged upside down into frigid water, they must respond to a range of adverse situations. Rolling is a requisite skill for becoming a hunter, and therefore part of how animal behaviour and environmental change are apprehended. But what is the character of knowledge in this ability to act creatively when capsized? Using examples form fieldwork, I will explore moments of learning captured from the shore, from support boats, and from waterproof cameras strapped to the kayak’s deck. Perspectival kinaesthetic imaging is demonstrated here is a powerful tool to examine the developmental interdependence of the body, environment, technology, and mind.