The Qasgi is an idea I stumbled upon during a visit to the Alaskan Native Heritage Center in Anchorage this past August
In the summer the Yup’ik and Cup’ik people of the Bearing Straight lived traditionally near their river, stream, and native hunting areas in small family groups, but once the winter came everyone returned back to what could affectionately be called the city. And during the winter, once each family’s sons were old enough the family would send them to live in the communal qasgi. There’s not a lot of privacy in the qasgi, it’s essentially a big open wood-beam lodge underground. The main entrance dips below the floor level of the qasgi so that heat can’t escape and in the center ceiling there is a cut out for smoke to escape from the fire. Bunks line nearly all of the walls, floor to ceiling, and in the middle there is plenty of room to dance, sing, drum, teach and make things.
But the part that really resonated with me was when I read this quote:
When I started going to the qasgi, my mother would say to me, “Go and try to steal.” I am very afraid of stealing. She was actually saying that I will steal information if I listen and learn from the person who is giving instruction, even though I am not literally taking anything. If I learn things that I will recall, I will live by those things all my life.
To steal knowledge! I feel that way every day, with every person that I meet. I think what stealing actually entails is the ability to listen, listen real good!, absorb that knowledge and then adapt that knowledge to my life, to my own plan and through my own method.
I think all present day knowledge has been “stolen” in this way. Knowledge is stolen, that knowledge is adapted to ones own unique circumstances, physical being, or quirk of personality, stolen knowledge, while still at its heart the same, is then stolen again, and adapted by the next generation…and so on and so on….until us!
The reason I think that the idea of the qasgi and stolen knowledge resonated so strongly with me is because I see my photography in this very same light. Myself, the artist believes that I can say it better, do it better through adaptation and that my way of saying a core idea is more relevant to what we are experiencing contemporaneously.
In this way you the subject or viewer of my image are connected to my life experience and stolen knowledge, and by default you are connected, through my image to the greater human consciousness, the stream of stolen knowledge that came before that moment and continues on after. Through my image you have become more human.
