Boreal ecopoetics: Christian Dotremont's site-specific writing in Sápmi

Abstract

Northern Fennoscandia entered Christian Dotremont's (1922–1979) imagination in 1956. The Belgian avant-gardist was comfortable in Central-European artistic milieus through his involvement in CoBrA (1948–1951), but a total of 12 journeys to Sápmi between 1956 and 1978 had a profound effect on his creative work, especially the logograms he is best known for. This article studies Dotremont's travel writings and logograms as site-specific forms of writing, which can be seen as precursors to ecopoetic approaches. Dotremont's journeys took place at a cultural turning point, when ethnographers had made their field trips but mass tourism was still in its embryonic state in Sápmi. His Sápmi-inspired travel writings reveal how the idealism related to a hyperborean north initially intrigued him while he sought to elude modernity. Dotremont's cultural exchanges in Sápmi were non-artistic but manifested in his art and writing. Sápmi brought about an ecological awakening through awe that was not sublimated but a lived experience. Dotremont immersed himself in Sápmi, with fundamental repercussions to his creative exploits.