Rowan Moore - Naked geology, dazzling light… my journey into the Arctic

By Dilip -

The Arctic can have this effect on people: its function in the imagination of the world is as a place to test or define, to look for some truth about existence by viewing it from its limit. The challenge of its otherness might explain why Mary Shelley chose to open Frankenstein in the Arctic wastes, and why the Soviets built the showcase coalmining town of Pyramiden more grandly and formally than its function required. Now the significance of the Arctic is above all about climate change, its effects there being particularly visible, significant and dangerous.

What if we couldn’t stand each other, on this vessel alone on icy seas? Agatha Christie would have loved the scenario

The belief that the Arctic has something to tell us motivates the Arctic Circle residency, a programme whereby artists, scientists and writers can, for half the actual cost, take part in expeditions aboard a tall sailing ship, around the coasts and islands of Svalbard. Feeling the need for new perspectives on life, I applied – and in early June joined 28 other participants, plus guides and crew, on the three-masted barquentine Antigua. Two weeks without night or internet, ignorant of World Cup results and the latest Trump eruptions, voyaging between 78 and 81 degrees north, going where the wind suggested, marvelling at glaciers in shades of blue beyond the power of words or cameras to capture – cobalt? cerulean? sapphire? “Are you going to find yourself,” teased a friend, “under an iceberg?”

read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/28/svalbard-expedition-arctic-trip-artists-and-writers-rowan-moore

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