The salmon and the coalfish

It was in the fall, when the salmon had already finished spawning and was gone far down the river. Then it met the coalfish that swam up. The salmon asked:

- "Where are you going?"
- "I'm going up the river", said the coalfish
- "Are you going up the river? What kind of look do you have in the river?"
- "I have a beautiful enough look", said the coalfish - "I also have a shiny side".
- "You have no fat", said the salmon.
- "I have fat in the liver," said the coalfish.
- "Hey, hey, and with that fat you're going up the river! A little more fat I had in my flesh when I went up, but see how I look now!"

The coalfish began to think: the fat in my liver probably doesn't keep me up to the river source.

And then it returned and left no more in its way. The place where they met, is still called Seistry, near Seida.

G. Balke, Karasjok
Published by Brita Pollan in the book Samiske Beretninger, 2005
Translated by Google in collaboration with Michelle-Marie Letelier

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Michelle-Marie Letelier was born in 1977 in Rancagua, Chile.

Her installations, photographs, videos and drawings encompass orchestrated transformations of natural resources, alongside extensive wide-ranging, interdisciplinary research into the landscapes where their exploitation and speculation take place. Her work juxtaposes different epochs, regions and societies, examining political-economic, historical and cultural aspects.

Michelle-Marie Letelier spent her early life in Chuquicamata, a space of copper deposits in the middle of the Atacama Desert of mined since pre-Hispanic times, annexed by Chile in the Saltpetre War (1879-84), and home to the largest copper mine in the world. When the town was to be buried due to new mining policies, Letelier returned to document this process—a pivotal moment that ushered in her practice.

Since establishing in Berlin in 2007, she has focused her research on five resources: coal, copper, saltpetre, wind and, more recently, Atlantic salmon, in order to create a poetic work applying their properties – such as electrical conductivity, crystallisation and liveliness. In her practice, she experiments with chemical and physical transformation processes that produce the artworks themselves, as well as their poiesis, beyond the extractive industry and its forms of control.

The work of Michelle-Marie Letelier carries heavy socio-political overtones; it is eloquently reflective especially in times of unveiled globalization, the increasing scarcity of raw materials and the crisis of the neoliberal model.

Michelle-Marie is currently and until March 8th on a residency at Troms fylkeskultursenter and was invited by Department of Culture, Tromsø County.