Abstract
This chapter investigates how the long-term project we are opposite like that (2017–2022) by contemporary artist Himali Singh Soin engages with posthuman feminist concepts within an Arctic discourse, here in particular in relation to the climatic changes that lead to the melting of the Polar caps, and what the gradual disappearance and transformation of what has dominated its landscape and mythologies over time—ice—means. Methodologically, the chapter uses images and quotes from Soin’s work as guiding story-telling elements to map out different themes and embodied concepts, including: the disappearance of planetary history through the melting Polar ice and with it, the disappearance of the ice as a natural archive; Astrida Neimanis’s ‘figuration’ of bodies of water; the mythologies, ghosts and monsters left behind that remain interlocutors for our future; the omnipresence of colonialism in the Arctic; how the relics of historical Arctic exploration still haunt us today; and how our situatedness points to our differences and distances from one another, but can also be used as a common feminist and transformative ground for creating other possible worlds.
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Notes
- 1.
In a conversation between the author and the artist, this double-connotation has been confirmed. Soin has additionally expressed that the material reflects the landscape back, and metaphorically also the viewer.
- 2.
Svalbard was formerly called Spitsbergen. In 1920 Norway was granted sovereignty over the archipelago which resulted in a name change from Spitsbergen to Svalbard. Official maps name only the main island of the archipelago Spitsbergen today. However, Spitsbergen is still often used by (non-Norwegian) lay people for the entire archipelago. In addition, there is Russian disagreement about the naming and Russian officials prefer to use the old name.
- 3.
If one would like to contact the artist via her webpage the contact form is headed by the sentence “send me a love letter”. See https://www.himalisinghsoin.com/contact (accessed 22 March 2022)
- 4.
If a below quote is uncited it emerged during the course of Soin and my informal communication between March and August 2022.
- 5.
Michael Bravo uses further examples of slow violence/ghostly environmental damage in the Arctic: “The Barents Sea off the coast of Norway and Russia is reportedly the most radioactive in the world, largely as a result of nuclear atmospheric tests carried out during the Cold War, emissions from reprocessing plants and the accident at Chernobyl. To the north and east of the Greenland and Barents Seas, high concentrations of old plastic arrive from the Atlantic Ocean by thermohaline ocean circulation, which acts as a ‘plastic conveyor belt’ from distant sources” (2019, 212).
- 6.
In 2014 and 2016 for example, the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were found in the Arctic Ocean, having been lost for over 160 years. Used under the command of Sir John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage, it is documented that they were abandoned in 1848 and the crew was never seen again. This lost expedition triggered the largest search and rescue endeavour seen in Arctic history, with 32 directly motivated expeditions embarking between 1847 and 1859 (Ross, 57). With the retreating ice it was finally possible to find the two vessels with archaeologists finding many objects on board that are almost intact. Many of these objects are today found at the Royal Museums Greenwich.
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von Spreter, S. (2024). Sensing Polar Ice Bodies. In: Hemkendreis, A., Jürgens, AS. (eds) Communicating Ice through Popular Art and Aesthetics. Palgrave Studies in Media and Environmental Communication. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39787-5_7
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