Reneltta Arluk is an Inuvialuit-Dene originally from the Northwest Territories. Raised by her grandparents on the trap-line until school age, being nomadic provided Reneltta with the skills to become the multi-disciplined artist she is now. Her ambition is to continue going down the road of an artist, to keep her culture living, and believe it natural that our stories be told through the Arts.
Reneltta is committed to the development of northern-based indigenous language inspired stories. From working with Innu youth as an acting coach in Sheshatshiu, Labrador on their short film Kuekuatsheu Mak Muak (Wolverine and the Loon) based in Innu to performing in a rotoscoped short film The Woman Who Came Back based on a Dogrib story partly illustrated by youth from Behchoko, NT in their language. In 2014, full-length feature film, Maina, was released into theatres. Based on a book of the same name, Maina features Reneltta in a principal role speaking Inuktitut as Aputik.
Reneltta’s desire to tell her own stories remain and in 2010 produced her first play, TUMIT, under Akpik Theatre. TUMIT gave her the opportunity to take her training one step further. As her mother says, “keep your culture alive, my girl.” Something she plans on doing for a very long time... http://akpiktheatre.com
Pat Braden sings of the people in his community, the eccentric characters, musicians and old timers who lived in those old town shacks and of friends, family and loves, celebrating their influence on his life. He weaves story into song, song into story, sometimes the spoken word resonating over a textural bed of music, a rolling chord pattern or a shimmering soundscape, generated on the Chapman Stick™. Braden is much more than a musician. He is a storyteller and songwriter who weaves his soft-spoken voice with textual musical elements to paint exquisitely beautiful images of the land and the people he loves. http://www.patbraden.com/
Carmen Braden is from Yellowknife, Northwest Territories and is currently an MMus Candidate in Composition at the University of Calgary. Her creative research has examined natural sonic phenomena, rhythms and harmonies, and draws on a life-time of aesthetic observations in the Canadian sub-Arctic. Carmen’s thesis work focuses on using the sounds of ice on Great Slave Lake in vocal, instrumental, and electroacoustic music. Her work has been performed by the Elmer Iseler Singers, the Gryphon Trio, the Land’s End Trio, and the Penderecki Quartet. Carmen’s works have been performed at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the National Arts Centre 2013 Northern Scene Festival, The Global Composition in Germany, the Shattering the Silence New Music Festival, and the Land’s End Emerging Composer Competition. In addition to working intensely with environmental sounds, she often composes in collaboration with other mediums including dance, theatre, film, and story-telling. Carmen is the Canadian Association for Sound Ecology representative with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology. Carmen’s academic study is supported by a SSHRC grant, and her creative work has been supported by the NWT Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. http://blackicesound.com/
Richard Van Camp is a proud member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Nation from Fort Smith, NWT, Canada. He is a graduate of the En'owkin International School of Writing, the University of Victoria's Creative Writing BFA Program, and the Master's Degree in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.
He is an internationally renowned storyteller and best-selling author. His novel, The Lesser Blessed, is now a movie with First Generation Films and premiered in September of 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival. He is the author of three collections of short stories, Angel Wing Splash Pattern, The Moon of Letting Go and Godless but Loyal to Heaven, as well as two children’s books with Cree artist, George Littlechild: A Man Called Raven and What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses?
Richard has three new books coming out: “Three Feathers”, a graphic novel on restorative justice with artist Krystal Mateus (Portage and Main); “Whistle” a mini-novel exploring mental health (out soon with Pearson Canada) and his new short story collection, “Night Moves”, will be out with Enfield & Wizenty in the Fall of 2015. http://www.richardvancamp.com
Courtney Chetwynd is an artist-researcher who was raised in the Eastern and Western
Arctic of Canada’s Northwest Territories. Currently a Ph.D. Candidate with the University of Dundee in Scotland, her work explores concepts of performativity and liminiality within Northern culture, through placed based research and interdisciplinary artistic practice. Courtney holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Mount Allison University and a Master of Fine Art degree from the University of Calgary. She has exhibited work in New York City, Atlanta, Indianapolis, Scotland, London, and throughout Canada. Courtney has received awards and research grants from the Alberta Foundation of the Arts, the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, the University of Calgary, the Centre for Research in the Fine Arts, the Government of Northwest Territories (NWT), and the NWT Arts Council. Her work focuses upon themes and metaphors of the body, space, and relationships by integrating Northern concepts and materials in a poetic and psychologically charged manner. http://courtneychetwynd.com/
Casey Kocyzan’s (Yellowknife, NT) work seeks to bridge the gap between visual and audio interpretations of art, while pushing the recognition for aboriginal values and politics. His largescale artworks provide
compositional value and experimental techniques to achieve his unique aesthetic. His musical
abilities also allow him to create his own soundtracks and auditory properties. Previous
installations take on traits of amorphous beings that are invading or reclaiming space in modern
architecture. http://caseykoyczan.wix.com/newmedia
Travis Mercredi is a Metis musician and sound designer born and raised in the Northwest Territories. Now residing in Yellowknife, he has been working in audio production for video and radio, theatre sound design, music production and location sound as well performing in bands Erebus & Terror and Sinister Oculus.
Charles Stankievech is a Canadian artist whose research has explored issues such as the notion of “fieldwork” in the embedded landscape, the military industrial complex, and the history of technology. His diverse body of work has been shown internationally at the Louisiana Museum, Copenhagen; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; MassMoca, Massachussetts; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Venice Architecture and SITE Santa Fe Biennales. His lectures for Documenta 13 and the 8th Berlin Biennale were as much performance as pedagogy while his writing has been published in academic journals by MIT and Princeton Architectural Press. His idiosyncratic and obsessively researched curatorial projects include Magnetic Norths at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University and CounterIntelligence at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, University of Toronto. From 2010-2011 (and again currently from 2014-15) he was hired as a private contractor for the Department of National Defence where he conducted independent research in intelligence operations under the rubric of the CFAP. He was a founding faculty member of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Canada and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design at the University of Toronto. Since 2011, he has been co-director of the art and theory press K. in Berlin. http://www.stankievech.net/
Jordy Walker (Whitehorse, Yukon) has been active in experimental and improvised music for over twenty years having performed or collaborated with artists such as Tanya Tagaq, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Richard Reed Parry, Kristen Roos, Christine Fellows, Shary Boyle and Yo Rodeo. In the past five years he has developed a body of interactive/participatory sound art and has shown work or performed at Newfoundland Sound Symposium, Squarewaves Electronic Music Festival, Riverside Arts Festival, Nuit Blanche Whitehorse, Toronto Harbourfront Centre, Arts Underground and Available Light Film Festival among others http://www.jordywalkermusic.com/soundart.html
Marc Winkler listens to voices all day long at CBC Radio, where he works as an associate producer. He grew up in Saskatoon, but has lived in the Northwest Territories since he moved to Inuvik in 2002. He recently released a documentary about a reindeer herder who lives alone with three thousand reindeer near the Arctic Ocean. It's called Tundra Cowboy http://www.tundracowboy.com