ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 5

This week saw the last sunset for four months. From now on, the sun will be sitting higher and higher in the sky with each passing day, and falling asleep will prove increasingly difficult. To mark the occasion, we went on a late night stroll to enjoy the last beautiful plays of pastels which the setting sun throws over the snow. (The light here really is unbelievable and surreal, and impossible to capture on camera). We also walked past loads of adorable Svalbard reindeer. They are found only on Svalbard, and are the only type of reindeer native to Norway. They have adapted to harsh arctic conditions, and wander around Longyearbyen completely unfazed by people and noisy snowmobiles.

With the weather turning over the weekend, and powerful gusts of winds sweeping in over Longyearbyen, I have been enjoying my days in the studio. Although I have been going to Artica almost every day, Svalbard hits you with so many impressions that it takes a while for you to process things and translate this into artworks. I spent a lot of my first month just sightseeing and collecting information, looking for connections between prevalent themes here and the themes I have been exploring in my own art.

I have been mainly intrigued by the Arctic as a “stage” for exploration and geopolitics, as I very much link this to my own family history, which in many ways was formed by colonialism and geopolitical strife in and around Singapore. I see many resemblances and ironies between the European scramble for territories in South East Asia, and how we are now very protective of our resources and territories in the Arctic, as many powerful (Asian) nations are strategically placing themselves along the northeast passage as precious minerals and new sea routes are emerging with the melting ice.

Parallel to my research, I have also worked on developing a suitable visual language. Two whole weeks was spent creating a pretty large mezzotint, which is still a work in progress. The motif is based on old photos found in the digital archives of Svalbard Museum, and features a view from the old Svea mine. In it I have juxtaposted a series of figures - two 1920s Scandinavian coalminers, a 1980s Polish geologist, two 1930s English explorers, Amundsen and Nobile’s airship “Norge” which flew from Svalbard to the North Pole in 1926, and an airplane heading into the mountains. It could be the Russian Topolev which crashed into Operafjell in 1996, with the Scandinavian coalminers here watching their Russian and Ukrainian peers perish. Or it could be a modern tourist plane, the coalminers observing how the rising tourism industry is overtaking the dominant role they once held at Svalbard. It is an open-ended story, an attempt to draw lines between past and future, and how the Arctic as a stage for self-realization and geopolitical strife is as prevalent now as it was then.

From last week’s residency dinner and presentation at Artica, where I demonstrated how I had made and printed my mezzotint plate.

This week I decided to abandon mezzotint for a bit. While it is one of my favourite techniques, mezzotint tends to lock me into a slightly timid and naturalistic style. (It is also extremely time consuming). One of my goals before coming up here was to be a bit more bold and experimental, trying out different techniques and expressions and adopt a more playful approach to art. I also wanted to work more physically and less theoretically, letting the material and medium control the process more than a predetermined concept. I therefore decided to make some aquatint plates where I applied a hard ground marbling, letting the randomness of the marbled pattern determine the contents and composition of the image.

To me, the marbling was strongly reminiscent of water and oceans, and I reverted back to the research I did during my first week here when I visited Svalbard Museum and looked at various old maps of the Arctic regions. Using Pen Up on my Samsung pad, I photographed my marbled copper plates and made them part of digital collages where I added elements such as ships, polar bears and sea monsters from a variety of old northern maps. While I work with old techniques, I love the opportunities that digital tools open up to me. However, I always revert my digital sketches back to something physical, and through the printmaking process the final image takes on a life and visual quality of its own.

The ships I am using in my first composition are based off of ships from the Barentsz map. This map was created after the Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz “accidentally” discovered Svalbard in 1596. The boats on the map are very small, and as I am making mine larger and more detailed, I had to study quite a few drawings of 16th century ships to get a grip of how all the numerous sailing mechanisms were connected. This is the first line etching I am doing in over a decade, and I have been enjoying the process so much!

This new project has been such a breath of fresh air to me. For a long time now I have felt the need to free myself from only working with portraits and personal family histories, as well as remove myself from the very naturalistic style which I sometimes tend to adhere to. I have been wanting to engage in a greater variety of subjects, and explore historical ways of stylizing imagery. I feel that these new images are a step towards that goal. Most importantly, the subject of sea faring, exploration and East-West relations still feels greatly personal to me. Still a bit on the fence about the final product, but that might just be because this visual style feels very new and different to me at the moment.

Colour test print of “Hic Sunt Ursi Albi” (“Here There Be Polar Bears”)

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 4

This little dot of buildings is Longyearbyen - the world’s northernmost town sitting at 78° north. The last port of civilization before the North Pole. When you live in Svalbard, this becomes your lifeline and your world. It has (almost) all the comforts you could possibly need. A supermarket. A hairdresser. A spa. A whisky bar. A Thai take-away. A hospital which will at least take care of your most basic emergencies, such as a broken leg.

As I spend my Saturday doing research in the library and enjoying fried rice for lunch at the local Thai restaurant, I feel for a few hours that Longyearbyen has all the semblance of a normal Norwegian town - it just happens to be a very cold dot in a seemingly endless land of icy mountains. Although a community of a mere 3000 people, I can attend art exhibitions, drink fancy cocktails, listen to interesting talks at the university, go to film festivals and and attend plays.

The truth is though, that Longyearbyen is anything but normal, and once it starts getting a hold of you (which it will), you must not be deceived into thinking that it is so. In many ways, this town can be as beautiful and brutal as its surroundings.

Many people, and to some degree myself, have a romanticized and almost fetishistic view of Svalbard and the Longyearbyen community. For me, and so many others, coming here is an adventure. An escape from civilization and our busy lives at home. However, for some people, life in Longyearbyen can become somewhat of a tragedy that one either knowingly or unknowingly walks into.

The Svalbard Treaty of 1925 recognized Norway’s full sovereignty over Svalbard. All signatory nations however, were given equal rights to establish commercial activities here, mainly related to mining, fishing and hunting, and in more recent times tourism. (The treaty restricts any military uses of the archipelago). Norwegian authorities may exercise the right to regulate activities, but this must be on conditions not enforced due to nationality. (As you can imagine, the terms of the treaty is often up for discussion, with its signatories often interpreting it in very different and conflicting ways).

Due to the unique nature of the Treaty, Svalbard is the only place in the world where a person can settle down without a visa or residence permit. As long as you have the means to support yourself and a house to live in, you may stay. With the rise of travel and tourism over the past twenty years, Longyearbyen has gone from being a mainly Norwegian town to an international melting pot where almost half the inhabitants are non-Norwegian.

Svalbard is run according to its own set of rules and regulations. Taxation is lower than on the mainland, and is stipulated to only support Svalbard and in no way directly benefit the rest of Norway. Due to this however, Norwegian social security does not extend to Svalbard, and nor are there GPs, care homes or mental health services here. As a non-Norwegian national, living and working at Svalbard for decades does in no way give you the rights that a Norwegian citizen might enjoy back on the mainland. In fact, were you to apply for a Norwegian citizenship, your years at Svalbard will not be taken into consideration. Svalbard is, in many ways, a tantalizing free for all no man’s land, while simultaneously imposing on you some severe limitations.

This week I finished reading the book “Annleislandet Svalbard: små liv i storpolitikken” by Line Nagell Ylvisåker, which I would highly recommend. Reading this book has been a real eye-opener, causing me to realize how little mainlanders know of this place. In Ylvisåker’s book, we encounter some of the foreigners who have settled in Svalbard for various reasons, and learn of their stories.

One story is that of Omid, an Kurdish asylum seeker who fled from Iran and tried to gain asylum in Norway. When his application was rejected, he was told by friends he could settle in Svalbard. He arrived in 2008, the week before passport controls were introduced. However, nobody told him that he could not leave again without the necessary papers. He became a “free prisoner caught in the arctic ice”. Omid has learned Norwegian and worked at Café Fruene, Longyearbyen’s primary establishment for over a decade. He is now in his forties, with no choice but to stay in Longyearbyen or go back to Iran. In 2019, he was finally able to procure the necessary papers to visit mainland Norway as a tourist for three months. While he says Svalbard is his home now, there will come a day when he is no longer young and healthy and able to take care of himself. He, and everyone else, knows that there is little mercy to be had from Norway when that day comes.

We also follow the story of Varisa. Her parents brought her from Thailand to Svalbard when she was only three years old. At Svalbard they could earn a good living through running a cleaning company, and offer Varisa a life of material welfare she could not expect back in her birth country. She has grown up speaking both Norwegian and Thai, but never quite managing to feel quite at home in either culture. She is now about to start university, but unlike her Norwegian friends, she cannot apply for studies on the mainland without having to procure a visa. Despite growing up on Norwegian land, she is fully aware that mainland Norway will never recognize her as one of their own. Svalbard provided her parents with the opportunity for a better life, but at the same time their decision placed Varisa in a difficult situation that she herself had no control over.

Life in Longyearbyen offers art, discussion forums, films and cosy restaurants.

Having spoken to many of the locals here, they confirm the situations described in Ylvisåker’s book. Many come here with the intention of staying for just a year or two, but end up falling in love with the place. (And trust me, there are numerous reasons to fall in love with Longyearbyen). However, they know their situation will always be precarious. One woman I spoke to has a child with special needs. There was a danger of her having to take her whole family back to her home country, because her child could not receive adapted education here. Ylvisåker herself also knows that she will one day have to leave Longyearbyen. After all, this is not an establishment for the sick and the elderly. Longyearbyen has a great turnover of people. On average, people live here for 5-6 years. This means you can never really know who will stay and who will leave. Forming tight bonds can be difficult, investing time and energy into people can feel less than fruitful. Some children find it too scary to form deep connections, because they never know if and when their friends will leave. In some ways, the term “local” in relation to Svalbard is a misnomer. There are no locals. We are all just visitors - whether it is for three months or twenty years. You cannot be born here, and you cannot be buried here. This land does not belong to any of us.

With increasing geo-political tension in the arctic areas, Norway is tightening its reins over the islands. In 2021, a new law was introduced, which took away foreign residents’ right to vote in Longyearbyen’s local elections. This means that people like me can come here and vote, whereas residents such as Omid cannot. This naturally came as a great shock to the people up here, and stirred up great rage and sadness, as it further highlighted the class divides of this beautiful, but brutal town.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 3

I feel as if I have travelled to the edge of the world.

To make use of the current spell of sunshine, my residency colleague Ellen and I decided to go on a dog sledding tour to Bolterdalen, and then on an icy boat trip to Billefjord in the hopes of spotting some polar bears.

Going on a residency is about challenging oneself in so many ways. Not only artistically, but also in more indirect ways that might lead to new discoveries and directions in one’s projects. Growing up, I was always an indoor person. I wanted to sit alone, all by myself drawing or working on craft projects. Nature was, and is in some ways, still something that feels quite daunting for me to explore. I never had the right gear, the mentality, the physical stamina or frankly, the interest - even though my dad did try to instill cross-country skiing in me, and as every other Norwegian kid, I was forced out on semi-traumatizing nature hikes in inclement weather.

I decided that by coming to Svalbard, I would try to be a little bit less afraid. I would spend my money on proper outdoor gear and brave the cold. I would try to slowly become more comfortable in nature, and hopefully bring that mindset home with me. (After all, when you spend this much money on shoes and jackets, you want to get a lifetime of use out of them).

If you were to tell me a few years ago that I would be spending three months in Svalbard and trying my hands as a dog sled musher, I probably would not have believed you. While it was only a half-day excursion (I have to ease into this nature thing), I felt rather proud of myself. We went on an excursion with a family owned company called Green Dog. Having lived on Greenland before relocating to Svalbard, their dogs are a rather unique and beautiful mix of huskies and Greenland dogs. They are incredibly strong, but also sociable, playful and characterful. Never in my life have I met such happy, active and well-stimulated creatures - I think they lead a very happy life at Svalbard. While the landscapes were beautiful, the best part of the experience was definitely the animals, and learning how to handle them and cooperate with them. Not to mention meeting all the puppies at the end!

The next day, Ellen and I went on a full day boat trip to Billefjorden with the ship Billefjord - one of the few passenger vessels that is able to sail out from Longyearbyen and break through the ice at this time of year. While the ice prevents us from getting close to land, the icy waters also offer a greater opportunity for spotting some of Svalbard’s amazing wildlife. I felt so fortunate, and so humbled, to spot both walrus and seals basking in the sun on big chunks of ice - and not to mention spotting a polar bear (!) walking along the edge of the mountain! To see one is a huge and rare privilege. I had to take most of my mobile phone photos through my binoculars, as the animals were quite a distance away. That did not matter though - it is how it should be. The less we disturb them the better, and from an artistic point of view, I quite liked the retro analogue vibe of the images. I also managed to get some stellar nature shots, which I will probably use as reference in some of my prints going forward.

After a day’s respite, our residency coordinator Lisa took us up on a snowy hike to Sarkofagen, a hill looking out over Longyearbyen at 500 meters above sea level. This must have been my first mountain hike since primary school, and for this urban gal, trekking up the mountain in ankle deep snow was very physically demanding. As we were outside the safety zone, we had to carry a rifle to protect ourselves upon potential polar bear encounters. Although such episodes are rare, one has to be alert - polar bears can be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Despite the snowy, foggy weather and the lack of clear views, the whole trip itself was worth it, as we also got to explore an ice cave underneath the Longyear glacier! The oldest of the ice is thousands of years old, and holds the earth’s memory through trapped plants and sediments. With the ice rapidly melting in the Arctic regions, geologists are rushing to collect samples before it is too late.

I promised myself before coming to Svalbard that I would not be drawing mountains, because that would feel like such an obvious route to go down. Besides, I have never considered myself much of a landscape artist. But lo and behold, this is where we are at now…. I will probably go deeper into my current project in a separate blog post later, but lets just say nature becomes a bit of a metaphor for human conditions in these images.

Turbulens at Norske Grafikere

I am participating in the group exhibition Turbulens at Norske Grafikere, which opens 4 April at 18:00 at Tollbugata 24 in Oslo. The exhibition is on display until 11 May.

Turbulens brings together older and younger Norway-based printmakers, juxtaposing prints from the ‘60s and ‘70s with newer contemporary works. The exhibition seeks to trace printmaking’s role as a political tool - whether it is through explicit political symbolism or through more subtle and ambiguous means. Turbulens explores and questions the power of the printed medium, and what is required to make a visual impact today’s hypervisual reality. How may an image find value beyond its immediate context?

Participating artists (in alphabetical order): Cathrine Alice Liberg, Jessica Williams, Kamil Kak, Karin Augusta Nogva, Kiyoshi Yamamoto, Lars Sandås, Marte Lill Somby, Morten Krohg, Sonja Krohn, Victor Lind and Willi Storn.

Curated by: Kristin Mandt Heim, Benedicte Macé Stensrud, Stephanie Serrano Sundby and Silje Johannessen.

The exhibition is supported by Kulturrådet and Fritt Ord.

Victor Lind – Landskap (2022) and Sonja Krohn - Gaza Madonna.

ARTICA Svalbard Residency | Week 2

Easter is upon us, and while Svalbard is currently entering another cold spell (it is effectively below -30°C here), it has also offered up beautiful misty icy-covered fjords and sunshine pouring into the print studio.

Trial and error

After spending much of last week in the print studio conducting boring, but necessary aquatint step etching tests, I finally managed to produce some good printing results. Every workshop has a slightly different setup, and variations in climate, acid strengths, printing felts, papers etc. means that I cannot always operate with the same measurements, ratios and times that would render me pristine prints at home. I was getting some rather disheartening results at first - however, I managed to identify the problems after a lot of trial and error, trying to eliminate whether my issues were related to my aquatinting, etching or printing processes. Having finally cracked the code, I am excited to embark on the fun stuff next week (i.e. actually producing art). I have also spent a lot of time rocking mezzotint plates, grounding up the copper surface so that I can scrape and polish down images. All the while consuming copious amounts of audiobooks.

Gruve 3 (mine 3)

In between studio hours I have been conducting quite a bit of research on Svalbard, and to kick off Easter week I went on a guided tour around Gruve 3 (Mine 3), which is located just north of Longyearbyen. Longyearbyen, and modern human presence at Svalbard, owes its existence to the local coal mining industry. Longyearbyen (Longyear City) was named after American businessman John Munro Longyear, who started the Arctic Coal Company here in 1906. The Norwegian Store Norske Spitsbergen Kulkompani (SNSK) took over in 1916, and is still responsible for operating the last open mine, Gruve 7. As mentioned in my previous post, Gruve 7 will be closing next year, and thus ending an era of Svalbard history.

Before entering the mines, we were equipped with authentic coveralls and helmets with a headlight. Before the tour, we also watched a short film shot in Gruve 3 by NRK in 1985, which gave a good sense of the working conditions of the miners. The tour exceeded all expectations - the history of Svalbard’s coal industry proved incredibly interesting, and the tour guide was very engaging. I never thought I would enjoy touring dark dusty tunnels as much as I did.

What heightened the experience of Gruve 3 was how it had become a slightly eerie, but well preserved time capsule. In the middle of their shift on 1 November 1996, the miners were told to pack up, as they were being moved to work in another local mine. Everything sits exactly as they left it that day - the cheese stored in the underground pantry, the magazines in the mining carts and the pin-up ladies on the walls. (As you can imagine, this was a very male-dominated workplace, although women did find their way into the mines eventually).

Arctic World Archive (AWA)

Not just being an accidental time capsule of the 90s, Gruve 3 has also become the host of The Arctic World Archive (AWA). Cutting deep into the permafrost like its neighboring Global Seed Vault, AWA opened in 2017 as a space to store our world heritage. SNSK is responsible for the operation and maintenance of the vault, including security and access control. On their website, AWA is described as a “secure underground and unhackable data vault at the centre of the permafrost, 300 metres inside the mine and 300 metres below the top of the mountain”. Digital files are stored in a piqlFilm, which is a “migration free, future proof and passive storage technology with a very low CO2 footprint that is extremely cost efficient and sustainable over time. The technology needs no servers, no migration, no electricity to keep the data alive for centuries.” Like the Global Seed Vault protects our future food supply and gene banks, AWA safeguards our digital and cultural legacy. Once again, past and future connects at Svalbard - both physically and metaphorically.

Migrant Ecologies Project

What does Svalbard and Singapore have in common? Ever since getting this residency, I have been asking myself that very question. How can I interpret my new surroundings through the lense of my Norwegian-Singaporean heritage and artistic research on diasporic memory? How can I create a bridge between a tropical island near the equator and an icy archipelago above the arctic circle?

Turns out, there is very special grain of wheat which lies buried behind this door inside Gruve 3:

Text taken from https://migrantecologies.org/Natural-Histories-Seeding-Stories:

On 10 June 2019, a single grain of wheat from the interior of a 133-year-dead, 4.7 metres long, saltwater crocodile shot in 1887 at the mouth of the no-longer-existing Serangoon River in Singapore and kept for over a century in the Raffles Museum, migrated to the Arctic circle. Migrant Ecologies Project artist Zachary Chan was flown to Svalbard with this very special grain of wheat and a series of other artistic offerings from the Migrant Ecologies Project for a ceremony, in which the works were offered to the mountain and placed to rest in Gruve/Mine 3, next to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank.

Our proposal consisted of regarding this 133-year-dead, saltwater crocodile as a comparative seed bank to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. But equally important for us has been the discovery of what has become a feral diversity of sources all claiming in different ways that this very crocodile is believed to host the spirit of Panglima (Warrior) Ah Chong, 19th century gangster, Taoist mystic, and anti-colonial freedom fighter.

How might such disparate beings as a wheat grain, a crocodile, and a spirit being, all entangled in the legacies of colonial agro-economies and monstrous dreams of progress, speak to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in a time of mass extinction and climate change?

Singapore and Svalbard are two islands situated in radically different parts of the globe.

There was, as we know, a violent scramble for natural resources by colonial powers from which Singapore emerged as entrepôt trading post in the 19th and 20th century. And the emergence and increase in attacks by saltwater crocodiles throughout our region can be seen as an ongoing result of the devastating impact of colonial and postcolonial capital on coastal ecosystems.

There is also a potential equivalent scramble for the Arctic commencing right now as China, Russia and America all compete for the precious minerals and sea routes that are being uncovered as the ice melts. Incursions by polar bears into the town of Longyearbyen are also on the rise.

Might Svalbard become the Singapore of the 21st century? And if so, what kind of worlds might this new entrepôt inherit?

Lots of food for thought.