Longyearbyen
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Arctic Post – Thurs 13th Oct Fuglefjorden – how darkness and light are bound together
--> Thursday 13.10.2016 Fuglefjorden - how darkness and light are bound together-2°C, 3m/s. Sunrise 10:11 sunset 17.15. 9-10 m/sA pre-breakfast Zodiac trip has been planned; it’s still dark when I arrive on deck. Can’t see any stars yet, a luminous green sea and dark land mass is silhouetted against the sky. The group of early-morning risers clamber into the Zodiacs, and travel out into a sea of ice, leaning out to push large chunks of looming icebergs out of the way. The sea and ice heave slowly – almost as though breathing, ice turning and moving away. We get close to the glacier, a massive wall that looms above us. Still dark and snowing slightly, falling flakes glisten in the flash from my camera. No-one speaks, it feels magical, gently traveling around the bay in a sea of ice as dawn begins to break, apricot in a clear sky. I sometimes can’t quite believe where I am. The ship comes into view in front of us in a blue world surrounded by chunks of ice.We are traveling in a vacuum, a small band of international artists on a boat high above the Arctic Circle - an improbable place with its own contested history of struggles and exploitations, of politics and power, darkness and light, myths and realities - and it’s difficult to think of what might be going on at home in the UK and elsewhere in the world. Since we left Longyearbyen most of us have had no contact with the outside, no phone, internet or radio. We occasionally talk politics (more often we talk about food and next meal or the next place we will arrive at); the Americans artists are all fed up about the looming election and the possibility of a Trump triumph, some talking about leaving the country to go to live in Canada and I can’t say I would want to stay in a ‘trumped up’ America; another artist is struggling with visas to leave one country and go to another. There are a few domestic concerns for some, but as one of the guides remarks to me, being in a cold distant place helps to get away from heightened emotions … it becomes a form of protection - ‘The sky seems closer to the land. I feel such a small dot in the landscape that I feel so insignificant that it makes problems disappear. Nothing ever happens that is important when I am away in the north’. Someone else when I ask her about her sense of north says that she feels that there is no space or time for the superficial here - it cannot survive - no time for drama. ‘North is to me the place that makes you go on a pretty straight path to the essence of it all/everything. It can be hard (conditions) and has extremes, taking you quickly to the essentials of living and surviving, and in that of life - actions, relations, words, intentions, thoughts, meanings’. There is the old ambiguity about going up there to find or lose oneself, but it is perhaps more that the far north, and particularly the High Arctic, intensifies experiences rather than providing answers or transformations. Canadian artist Glen Gould made a radio documentary programme of sounds and words and silences called the Idea of the North. For Gould the idea of north was as a metaphor for the sheer physical profundity of the northern land, ‘an escape from the limitations of civilization’ .. as something ‘other’, separate, away from society; a state of mind within which lay creative possibilities. He concludes that this vast irreducible territory is a strength, a constant reminder of the need for unity, a source of saving humanity rather than seeing it simply as a source of wealth for natural resources. Author Peter Davidson in his book The Idea of North (2004) refers to its ‘absolute difficult beauty’. Trying to grapple with all this and make work is interesting – and challenging. Sometimes the landscape seems to just draw itself – it looks like drawings rather than reality - out of this world – and I wonder what I can add to it. Davidson writes: ‘apersistent myth of the north in our own time is that the exploration of the Arctic is morally pure, connected with concepts such as rigorous self-discipline and self-knowledge, allowing artists to cling to the popular belief that northern regions are untouched, pristine. It is both reality and imagination, both rich and dangerous, a northern haven, but also a harsh dark place’. It becomes a clear bright morning. Breakfast over there is a landing on Svidjotholmen (or ‘Spikeholmen’ after Spike one of the artists traveling with us), I’m really torn between going to the island and staying on the deck to work; in some ways I should make every opportunity to go on land. In the end I stay and work on deck. I watch silhouetted figures moving around on the island, dwarfed in front of the massive shape of Svidjotbreen, and hear the noise of a large glacial calving, which I’m later told causes a big wave to hit the island. I’m sure I’m going to regret not going… but will I gain anymore from drawing on land rather than looking at the land from the sea?Midday we sail south, the wind has dictated our direction. So this is as far north as we are going to get, I feel disappointed. Cloud hovering and descending, mountains disappear reappear disappear reaching up into the sky and I’m not sure where mountains stops and sky begins anymore. A thunder grey and pale blue world, pale turquoise blue-green sea, dark ripples traveling fast across its surface. We pass chunks of ice, one looks like a swan with wings outstretched, then a large intensely turquoise piece – it doesn’t look real. Snowings again, four seagulls flying just above the sea, a dark line against white. A dusting of new snow on the mountains, dark jagged teeth above smooth snow covering. We pass glacier after glacier; I wonder what early travelers made of all this, a place of horror or wonder? In the book ‘Arctic Dreams’ author Barry Lopez remarks:'...It is as though the land slowly works its way into the man... The land becomes large, alive like an animal; it humbles him in a way he cannot pronounce. It is not that the land is simply beautiful but that it is powerful. Its power derives from the tension between its obvious beauty and its capacity to take life. Its power flows into the mind from a realization of how darkness and light are bound together within it..”. Mid afternoon, snowing so heavily that I can’t see anything; we sail on in our own white world and take turns to sweep the deck. Late afternoon the snow stops, the sky clears, the sun setting pink-orange reflected in light green pink-tinged sea, dark clouds. I stay on deck desperately trying to paint as the wind picks up - 9-10 m/s; it’s icy and my paint begins to look a bit like those slush puppy drinks kids buy. There’s still a very cold wind blowing. Most of the mountains remain shrouded in grey mist, sea turns dark blue black, a Guillimot flies by.Evening, we anchor at Fjortende Julibukta and drink mulled wine on deck in the dark.
• Taking leave of Longyearbyen Oct 19th
--> Finally I am in the air and taking leave of Longyearbyen. A lot of us are leaving on the same flight so there's been a lot of hugging and kissing and some tears. I don't really do the big goodbye stuff. So onto the plane... Passing through mist and cloud and up, I see the sun for the first time. It has been so low on the horizon for the past couple of weeks that only a glow from below the horizon reminds us of its presence. Now here it is, shining gold in a blue sky above a thick bank of pink-blue-white clouds that stretch to the horizon. Small whisps sail by. I can see cloud roads and canyons and rivers snaking through their mass. The Longyearbyen I leave behind is a grey rain-filled landscape. It feels even more like a frontier town. Sad patches of dirty snow lie abandoned; the roads wet, no longer shining with slippery ice that had me skittering to the sides, arms flailing. Snow is fast disappearing from the mountains. I look up at the one I climbed yesterday; now stark, dark rock, not the snow-covered peak I encountered. Is this normal? I am filming out of the window of the plane, a Boeing 737-800. It’s my last -ditch attempt at getting aerial footage, and I have no idea what will emerge. If I get anything you’ll be the first to know. My kite has been carried up mountains and down, ridden in Zodiacs, sat on shores in front of glaciers. Occasionally it’s been unpacked and laid out across stone strewn ground ready for flights that haven’t happened, but mostly it been left rolled up in its bag. I have spent time walking around holding my arms out as though embracing the landscape, feeling for winds that weren’t there to be felt. When there was wind there were Walrus, or rain, or not enough wind, or too much wind, or wind that came in gusts and then disappeared, leaving me standing poised with strings held out, waiting and waiting, until they stuck to the frozen permafrost ground and snagged on rocks. Yes it’s been frustrating. Back to the plane…… Below me are brown mountains, peaks poking out of the clouds stretching out beneath me. I can see down to the ground where shining lakes sit. The in-flight magazine in the pocket of the seat in front of me tells me that this month’s questions are can spoon carving be good for your health, and should babies sleep in cardboard boxes? The answer is that apparently you can whittle your way to inner peace, and that yes, the Finnish baby box come with everything you need for the first years of life, and has been used successfully in Finland since 1938. I also learn that the plane I’m in is 39.8m long, 12.5m high, has a wingspan of 35.8m, two engines CFM 56-7B26 which give a thrust of 26,400lbs per engine with a cruise speed of 858kph. It tells me that the plane I’m in is one of the most environmentally friendly and greenest planes in the world; I feel smug. On following pages I am introduced to ‘smart tools’ for the ‘smart man’ in the way of personal grooming…. I wonder if I should takes some notes and pass them on. But then I find Gidsken Jakobsen – Norway’s aviation pioneer, who, from the look of her, would have no truck with sharp-looking men with or without tidy moustaches and big beard kits (do these actually give you big beards I wonder?). Racing a Chevrolet, and then taking up flying, Gidsken Jakobsen became the first person to fly her Finnish Säa ski II sea plane, Måsen, from Narvik in northern Norway to Oslo – a treacherous 35 day journey in the winter of 1929. Taking off on another epic journey from Balestrand in June 1934, her engine fell out of her plane midflight, 900m above Sognefjord. Somehow she managed to land in the bay and survive. What a woman! Our pilot comes over the radio – apparently it’s 4 degrees in Oslo and we will be landing in 20 minutes. Outside we are back to masses of white cloud lying below us. The plane banks and starts its descent; white-out, and then the landscape flashes towards us and with a jolt we are back on terra-firma. It’s dark when I finally leave Oslo four hours later; time spent hanging about in an airport is not my idea of fun. The plane is crowded and I’m sure I’m not in the right seat; I don’t do isle seats, but don’t want to argue with the person occupying the seat – my seat - beside me… I crane my neck to look out the window as the plane taxis. I glimpse a sign saying ‘technical services’ and red green blue lights flashing past. The plane pauses, lurches forward with a roar and up into the air. Lights recede and we’re in dark sky. I have left the Arctic far behind… but not in my head… it will be resurrected in work I’ll be making in the studio over the coming year.
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