People Have Always Told Stories

People Have Always Told Stories

Lars Dyrendom • Breadfield Press

ISBN not provided · 2025

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Completeness 37

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Some stories end up in archives, while others live on through oral tradition. Some become official truths; others are forgotten or rendered invisible. Stories have always existed, yet they are shaped, erased, or reclaimed depending on power, place, and time. Lars’ and Inuk’s work represent two narratives that, in different ways, illuminate Greenland’s history, memory, and colonial structures — both past and present. Lars’ Danish project uses the archival backs of photographs, where notes and names reveal power hierarchies: the Danish members of the expedition are identified with full names, titles, and clear subjectivity, while the Inuit are objectified and described as types. Inuk’s Greenlandic project, based on oral memories and landscapes, gives voice to personal and collective heritage and addresses issues such as uranium mining near the mountains — where extractive interests continue to fuel Western consumerism with little regard for nature, animals, or human life. The work also creates an encounter between photographic and filmic media in book form.Lars’ projectThe backs of the photographs represent colonial archival material and institutional memory. They reveal how the history of Greenland has been written in margins, in notes, and in colonial archives—where the Inuit become invisible. The back off the pictures are from the The Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924) and Peter freuchen privet arkice now and the kungelige bibliotek I København. Was one of the most important Danish polar expeditions, with the purpose of searching the origins of the Inuit. The expedition accommodated 15 people: five Danes and seven native Greenlanders. Inuk’s projectReflects the oral tradition and lived memory. It ties the history of the individual and the people to nature and politics—the ongoing relationship between humans and place. It is a cinematic portrait of despair and anxiety towards an unknown future for the Inuit of the world's largest island. The film questions the rationale behind past and future mining prospects in Greenland and how they are linked to the search for identity of the fledgling nation in a post-colonial world.

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