In their introduction to Arctic Archives. Ice, Memory and Entropy, Susi K. Frank and Kjetil A. Jakobsen consider the polar regions as the knowledge archive of our planet. Here ice acts as a memory medium to form a natural archive which, on the one hand provides us with information on climate history and deep time, at the same time it suddenly lays bare – due to its melting process – formerly hidden human and other biological histories. On the other hand, because it is a disappearing archive, it also wipes out the histories it formerly stored. Consequently, Frank and Jakobsen argue, climate change not only threatens our future but also our past. From this perspective, Arctic ice is considered an active agent that paradoxically enough can also be associated with passive notions of melancholy and loss. In both cases however, ice is seen as having capabilities, sensibilities and qualities that go beyond those collected and made visible through scientific tools and data. In my presentation, I will examine artworks that investigate changing environmental conditions of the Arctic and how/if they visualise the capabilities, sensibilities and qualities of a medium that has historically been associated with “the frozen regions at the end of the world”. My particular interest here is how artists apply or refer to scientific research methods and data, and how they are, in that way, often themselves engaged in long-term research processes in order to make visible what is difficult to grasp and what we need to see.
Stephanie von Spreter is currently PhD fellow in art history and member of the research group Worlding Northern Art (WONA) at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. WONA’s goal is to strengthen research in art and visual culture from, in and on the (Circumpolar) North. Her research project is anchored in this research group, examining contemporary photographic art that engages with the Arctic as a gendered, colonial and ecological space. Von Spreter also works as a freelance curator and writer. Between 2011 and 2018, von Spreter served as the artistic and managing director of Fotogalleriet, Oslo. In this position, amongst other responsibilities, she has curated a large number of exhibitions and seminars with a focus on contemporary photographic art. Von Spreter is also the co-founder of the first exhibition guide for contemporary art in Oslo, U.F.O. (Utstillingsguide For Oslo), in the meantime called Oslo Art Guide. Von Spreter also worked for various large international exhibitions, including the 3 rd, 4th and 5th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. She was assistant curator for the exhibition The Structure of Survival at the 50. Biennale di Venezia and curatorial assistant at Documenta11, Kassel.