Whale Bone
Alexandra Lockhart
Convinced I was placed in a world of illusion, bone grounded me, spirit aloft. The Whale, the one guided by magnetism, an innate sense of direction I yearn for. From under the surface, with knowledge of depth, you pin my naivety. To happen upon, I saw the beach you were slaughtered on. Atrocity of Sapien’s greed. A beach colorfully swept with algae, life gifted from nutrients of your ancient spilled blood, and an ocean now deprived of you. Without seeking revenge or holding a grudge, you offer yourself to cyclicality.
Self portrait. Svalbard, Norway.
©2022, Alexandra Lockhart. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Supporting Love
Leonor Anthony
Supporting Love, assemblage photographed in situ, Svalbard, 2022.
©2022, Leonor Anthony. All Rights Reserved.
“Supporting Love” revolves around creating a global “human chain” of women by collecting bras from women around the world. The inspiration behind this initiative lies in the powerful symbolism of a human chain, where physical connection serves as a demonstration of solidarity or protest.
This project was conceived in 2019, inspired by the remarkable sight of a 385-mile-long human chain in India by women of all ages and stature in life. Witnessing the powerful display of unity as women held each other’s hands in peaceful protest left an indelible mark on me. The project takes shape by collecting donated bras from women around the globe, symbolizing the diverse backgrounds and stories of the women contributing to this unique endeavor.
All the garments in the project have been donated and worn, and this is very important. A bra is more than a mere undergarment, it cradles not only the physical contours of a woman’s body but encapsulates the intricate tapestry of her experiences, emotions, and resilience. Beyond the realm of supporting the mammary glands and breasts, a bra becomes an intimate vessel that holds the very heart of a woman. Woven into its fabric are stories of growth, love, strength, and vulnerability. It is a silent witness to the metamorphosis of a woman through the various stages of life – from the tentative steps of adolescence to the confident strides of adulthood. In its snug embrace, a bra embodies the dual nature of femininity – the delicate and the resilient.
It cradles the heart, not just as a physical organ but as the epicenter of passion, courage, and compassion. It stands as a symbol of the woman’s ability to carry the burdens of the world on her shoulders while maintaining grace and poise.
During the Arctic Circle Artist residency, the bras I brought took on a poignant and symbolic journey. Spread across various locations throughout the residency, the interconnected bras reached a culmination on our last day at sea when a fiercely independent and fearless woman (our leader Sarah) hung them from the high mast; I could not have never done that by myself. Once again, women helping women.
Against the backdrop of a breathtaking pink sky, as our journey concluded, this powerful act held a dual significance. It not only represented the unity and solidarity fostered by the “Supporting Love” project but also served as a gesture in support of the courageous women of Iran.
In that moment, thousands of miles south, women in Iran were risking life and limb for the fundamental freedom of one another. Witnessing this display of strength and defiance resonated deeply, evoking a flood of emotions that brought tears to my eyes.
The sight was unforgettable, etching itself into my memory as a poignant reminder of the very essence and purpose of the project – to stand in solidarity, promote unity, and amplify the voices of women globally, especially those facing formidable challenges in their pursuit of freedom and empowerment.
Supporting Love, assemblage photographed in situ, Svalbard, 2022.
©2022, Leonor Anthony. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Sergei Chernikov with Yeti Mask
Harley Cowan
Sergei Chernikov with Yeti Mask, Silver gelatin print, 2022.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares that they have no competing interests.
The Things We Bring
Joan Albaugh
The Things We Bring, Photogravure, 2023.
©2023, Joan Albaugh. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
The Cuban Flag
Leonor Anthony
Placing a Cuban flag in Sally Hamna’s hut near the North Pole held a profound significance for me. As a Cuban native and political refugee since the age of five, displacement has been my constant companion. This act became a symbol of triumph over adversity, a testament to the indomitable spirit that persists despite the challenges faced by those forced to flee their homeland.
The journey from the warmth of Cuba and Miami to the frigid expanse of the North Pole mirrors the arduous path that most individuals like myself have treaded in life, marked by resilience, perseverance, and an unyielding commitment to freedom.
In the midst of the ice and snow, where the cold winds whisper tales of struggle, the Cuban flag became a symbol, a beacon of hope and unity.
It is a declaration that, despite geographical distances and cultural differences, the human race shares a common thread of perseverance and the pursuit of a better life.
The flag serves as a reminder that no matter where one finds themselves on the globe, the spirit of solidarity transcends borders, bringing people together under the banner of shared humanity.
This symbolic gesture was not just for personal triumph but a celebration of the collective strength that binds all those who have faced displacement and adversity. It echoes the sentiment that, despite the challenges that life may present, the human spirit can endure, adapt, and even thrive in the most unlikely of places.
Placing the Cuban flag near the North Pole was a statement of resilience, an ode to the unwavering spirit of those who carry the weight of their homeland in their hearts while forging new connections and creating a sense of unity amidst the vast and diverse landscapes of the world.
The Cuban Flag, photograph, 2022.
©2022, Leonor Anthony. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Anchorage at Sallyhamna
Harley Cowan
We were anchored at Sallyhamna in Fairhaven in the far northwest of Spitsbergen. We had tremendously favorable winds that swept us up Spitsbergen’s west coast overnight.
This cabin belonged to Waldermar and Sally Kraemer (after whom the harbor is named). It was built in 1937 over an older whaler’s blubber oven. Other blubber ovens dot the landscape out of frame to the right.
This was one of the few sites we visited with a healthy growth of moss and lichen. This is because centuries-old oils and blood from whales still provide enough organic nutrients to support their growth. These lichens are protected, as are the remnants of structures. Visitors are not allowed to walk on them.
Anchorage at Sallyhamna, Silver gelatin print, 2022.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault
Harley Cowan
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, Silver gelatin print, 2022.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
Jäderin Expedition Landing Marker, 1898
Harley Cowan
Stones arranged on a beach spell out the name of the Jäderin Expedition that landed here in 1898.
Our expedition leader, Sarah, leans against a large boulder at the top of the marker. Rocks piled against the other end of the boulder look similar to a whaler’s grave; however, we suspect they once held up the wooden pole now lying on the ground. The marker is difficult to see from a distance and a flag would have been helpful to future visitors looking for the landing site.
We began our voyage without a set itinerary; our tall ship would sail where the winds took us. Departing Longyearbyen, we had not dreamed that four days later we would have crossed north of the 80th parallel and breezed past Moffen Island to stand on the north coast of Nordaustlandet. Finding ourselves in this loneliest of places, Sarah Gerats recalled a story about Swedish explorer Edvard Jäderin.
In the late 1800s, the Swedish and Russian governments planned a joint scientific expedition called “Arc-of-the-Meridian” which would take place between 1899 and 1902. The goal was to make triangulated measurements, north to south, across Svalbard to determine whether the earth was spherical or if its curvature flattened near the pole as predicted by Newton. Russians were responsible for the south and the Swedes for the north. In 1898, Edvard Jäderin led a preparatory expedition to scout Nordaustlandet.
There was rumored to be a beach where Jäderin’s crew landed and laid out stones spelling their name and date. While there were some vague clues to its location, neither Sarah nor our other crew had ever seen it. Until now. Hands down, one of the greatest days on our voyage was discovering these stones laid down 125 years earlier and left undisturbed ever since.
Jäderin Expedition Landing Marker, 1898, Silver gelatin print, 2022.
©2022, Harley Cowan. All Rights Reserved.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Macrophones
Brian House
Expedition leader Sarah Gerats listens to infrasound via House’s Macrophone near Esmarkbreen (glacier), Svalbard. Photo.
©2022, Brian House. All Rights Reserved.
Audio URLInfrasound audio recording captured near Smeerenburgbreen (glacier), Svalbard. 1:80 ratio of recorded time to playback time; frequencies are heard ~6 1/3 octaves higher than originally sounded. 2023. Recording and production: Brian House.
The author declares they have no competing interests.
Body of Air: On Infrasound and Sensing Crisis
Brian House
The term “ground truth” first appears in poetry—Henry Ellison’s “The Siberian Exile’s Tale” from 1833. Today it’s more often used in the context of remote sensing. That is, if much of what we know of the world at a distance is mediated by technological systems, ground truth is what we experience up close. I’m here in Svalbard ground-truthing; back home half a world away, with the help of machines, I heard something, and now I’m standing at the foot of a glacier that, perhaps, was the source. But for me, it’s not only about a sound, but a question of the climate crisis and even one of love. I’ll explain.
Waves
When I speak to you, the ebb and flow of air from my mouth makes a wave about ten feet across, interrupted at some point by your ear. That’s a bigger wave than you might expect. Contemporary information theory suggests that communication consists of a transmission from point A to point B through some inert medium; I send the words, and you receive them. But the reality is that my voice envelopes you; it’s an embrace of your whole body in a vibrating, lively atmosphere.
We’re awash in a world of waves. It’s just those that happen to fall within the personal physiological limits of our ears that register as audible; as an artist, I’ve recently been exploring those that do not. It turns out that there can be “sound”—if we can still call it that—with waves measuring miles across, frequencies so low that not only are they beneath any human’s capacity to hear, but they’re below our ability to feel, even as they flow through us every day. We call this “atmospheric infrasound,” the anthropocentric “infra” denoting only that humans can’t hear it.
But there’s something even more special about infrasound. Due to a quirk of atmospherics, low-frequency waves aren’t attenuated by the air in the same way that normal ones are. If I keep talking as I walk down the street, before long you’ll no longer hear my voice. But infrasound travels—a hundred miles, a thousand miles, maybe even around the globe. This planet has one atmosphere, and infrasound bounces all around it, collapsing distant locations into one resonant whole.
Which begs the question: what could we listen to, if we could hear infrasound? What is the source of these inaudible waves within which we live our lives? I asked this question of the scientific literature, and among the answers I received are calving glaciers, power plants, wildfires, shifting ocean currents, superstorms, and even the most massive of HVAC systems, such as those at data centers. Perhaps it should be no surprise that these are the sounds of the atmosphere in a time of climate crisis.
Movement
Knowing that, I can’t bear the curiosity; I want to listen. If I could, I’d make myself big enough to hear these sounds, ballooning larger than a whale until my skin vibrates slowly enough to move with atmospheric waves. Instead, I make a machine. If a microphone captures small sounds and makes them bigger, what I call a “macrophone” can capture really big sounds and make them smaller. But the guides on this expedition call it my “spider”—a network of tubes capped with fuzzy windscreens that stretch across 80 feet of the Arctic landscape, sampling and averaging the air flow to isolate the infrasonic signal, speeding it up and raising its pitch into something audible.
The spiders don’t actually live up here; they’re better suited to the woods back in Western Massachusetts. Because infrasound travels thousands of miles, in theory I’m hearing some of these same Arctic sounds when I listen from home. But though I may suspect that a sound comprises the vast waves released by a glacier as it flows into the sea, I have an epistemological problem. Which is that even if I am hearing it, I don’t know for certain that this is what glacial infrasound sounds like. So here I am, at the top of the world, attempting to listen to a moving glacier up close. Ground-truthing.
In some ways I’m ambivalent about the endeavor. There are colonial overtones to any “expedition,” the Arctic Circle Residency included; let’s be clear that travel to a distant locale in search of aesthetics signals privilege rather than sophistication. What is in front of me is everything and more of the polar imaginary in which I’m already subconsciously versed, and though I’m here for sound, I can’t help but reach for my camera to recreate images like those I’ve seen of jagged peaks, impossible sculptures of ice, walrus comedies, and the undeniable romanticism of a masted ship cutting into a frozen bay.
Yet the actual shock of any wilderness burdened by Western dreams is that it is as concrete as anywhere else. It’s made so by the prosaic efforts of the body—hungry, sanguine, seasick, bored—that bring us into contact with where we are, whether it’s for a day or for the better part of a lifetime. Here, I know myself by the frozen ground penetrating my rubber boots, the pantomime of seals tracking our progress down the shore, the COVID-19 spreading among my shipmates. The body is ground truth, and it’s never alone.
Breath
For all that, what do I hear of an Arctic glacier? Sped up by a factor of eighty, a minutes-long groan becomes an exclamation; what was so deep as to be an imperceptible part of the background becomes a melody. Bursts, pops, tones, and whistles—anything but silence. What’s lost in majesty is gained in cautious familiarity; the wall of ice before me is rendered as an ice cube in my hand.
I’ll play you this recording, and I think there is some poetry in it. True, it might be a document of a glacier melting before its time. If so, this is not new information, and I do not mean to aestheticize the dying; in a world out of balance, we don’t need to dramatize a reality in which we’re already immersed. But that, in fact, is what I take from these sounds. That even if I recorded them in Svalbard, I might have heard them in Massachusetts. That there is but one atmosphere, filled with infrasound from melting glaciers, breathed everywhere, and I now know it to be true.
On a distant and warmer shore, my son has a grip on my hand. Too small to swim, he runs in circles at the water’s edge, pulling me along with toddler vitality until I’m stumbling for my breath. Glaciers and power plants embrace us both, unheard but not silent. Perhaps it’s “air truth” I’m straining to hear; nothing so solid to stand on, but the shape of the world becoming.
The author declares they have no competing interests.