Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk
(Inupiaq)
I live and work on lands of Sugpiat and Dena'ina peoples.
Qutaaŋuaqtuit: Dripping Music
2018
Digital video
14 min. 07 sec. (total duration)
With Miranda Ramnares
Collection of the Artist
A video is played. The artist performs a classical score by George Rochberg, Caprice Variations for solo violin (1973), overlaid with Inupiaq words, interpreting each variation and claiming name to Alaska Native belongings from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre's collection. Placed in relation to Rochberg's Caprice Variations, different systems of cultural knowledge and production are brought into dialogue with one another.
Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk is the granddaughter of Helen Aklaseok and Willie Senungetuk, and the daughter of Ron and Turid Senungetuk. She is an Inupiaq scholar of ethnomusicology and a musician, who has focused her research in Indigenous people practicing and performing music and dance in urban areas throughout the Arctic. Currently, she serves the University of Alaska Anchorage as the first postdoctoral fellow in Alaska Native Studies. She continues to perform with the Kingikmiut Dancers and Singers of Anchorage, a traditional Inupiaq dance group with ancestral ties to Wales, Alaska, and with the Anchorage Symphony Orchestra.
Resources for Further Research
Additional information and writings about Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk, compiled by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery team.
Suggested Further Reading
Perea, Jessica Bissett. The Politics of Inuit Musical Modernities in Alaska. PhD Diss. University of Los Angeles. 2011.
Senungetuk, Heidi Aklaseaq. “Introduction,” Creating a Native Space in the City: an Inupiaq Community in Song and Dance. PhD Diss. Wesleyan University. 2017.
Senungetuk, Heidi Aklaseaq. “Pagmapak: In Modern Times.” In Music and Modernity Among First Peoples of North America, edited by Victoria Lindsay Levine and Dylan Robinson. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2018. xiii-xviii.
Heidi Senungetuk, Qutaaŋuaqtuit: Dripping Music, 2018, video. Collection of the artist. Installed at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
