The Arts Catalyst, the British Library and the Open University
POLAR: Fieldwork & Archive Fever
An interdisciplinary symposium
PROGRAMME
DAY 1 - Monday 19 November 2007
10.00 Registration & Coffee
10.30 Welcome from British Library
Introduction from conference organisers, Dr Katrina Dean, Curator of History of Science, British Library & Dr Kathryn Yusoff, University of Exeter
Welcome from Nicola Triscott, Director, The Arts Catalyst
11.00 Keynote: Professor Denis Cosgrove, UCLA
12.00 Session 1: The Core
Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica are among the most startling and challenging archives discovered in recent times. Ice cores contain the climate history of the planet. The ice core is a timeline, including pre-history (Earth history) and human history. What does the core tell us about climate change and how do we get this knowledge from the core? How is the core extracted, curated, interpreted into the discourse of climate change? What is the nature of core histories?
Chair, Introduction: Dr Kathryn Yusoff
Speaker 1: Dr Eric Wolff, British Antarctic Survey, Ice cores
Speaker 2: Heather Frazar, Artist, Los Angeles, Icy Demands: Coring, Curating, and Researching the GISP2 Ice Core
Speaker 3: Dr Nigel Clark, Open University, Spectral Analysis: Reading Signatures of Suffering in Ice and Ash Cores
13.15 Lunch
14.00 Session 2: Polar Imaginations
Public interest in and knowledge of the Poles has always been mediated by cultural productions, from plays and artworks to natural history documentaries. How do these productions inform our images of the poles and how have these changed over time? Further, how do such cultural outputs themselves support the willingness of publics to fund and engage in polar exploration and science? How do they help us to understand the complex science and cultural effects of climate change?
Chair, Introduction: Professor Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Speaker 1: Rita Cachão and Inês Nisa Rato, Ecotopia, The Plot of Nullius_Antarctic Landscape
Speaker 2: Fiona Davies, Artist, Australia, Intervention / Transitory / Landscape
Speaker 3: Jean De Pomereu, Photographer and science writer, International Polar Foundation, Freeze Frame: Capturing Antarctica’s ‘Absence’
15.15 Tea
15.45 Session 3: Instruments & Spaces of Curation
Explorers since the nineteenth century have sought to measure, sample and "bring back" the poles to field stations, observatories, museums and laboratories for comparison and analysis. How do instruments enable the curation of the polar landscape through methods of extraction, recording, and classification? How do the things that pass through the instruments of curation come to stand for the Poles?
Chair, Introduction: Nicola Triscott, Director, The Arts Catalyst
Speaker 1: London Fieldworks (Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson) Polaria
Speaker 2: Professor Bob Spicer, Open University, Paleobotany & Climate Change
Speaker 3: David Buckland, Cape Farewell
5.00 Drinks
Archives & Public Programmes
Heather Lane, Archivist, SPRI, University of Cambridge
John Shears, Director of Artists & Writers Programme/Head of Environment and Communications, British Antarctic Survey
6.30 PUBLIC LECTURE – The New Iconography of Climate Change
Ice cores, glaciers, field stations can be thought of as an archives and spaces of knowledge that inform how we imagine and shape our collective futures. In this session we will debate how these archives might well claim to hold the world's knowledge.
Discussant: Professor Denis Cosgrove, University of California, Los Angeles
Speakers:
Dr Eric Wolff, Glacier Chemist, British Antarctic Survey
Stephan Harrison, Associate Professor of Quaternary Science, University of Exeter, and Senior Research Associate, Oxford University Centre for the Environment
Marko Peljhan, Artist and initiator of I-TASC (Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation), Director, Projekt Atol
DAY 2 - Tuesday 20th November
10.00 Coffee
10.15 Artists Talk – Anne Brodie, Artist, British Antarctic Survey/Arts Council of England Artist & Writers Fellow
10.45 Session 4: Worlds of Data
The climate model is only the latest iteration of centuries of numerical calculation of climate parameters and variables. How does this numerical processing produce syntheses and trends from the experiences and extractions of polar exploration and science. What techniques and theoretical assumptions underpin the processing of data? How have these changed over time, and how has this changed our perception of the Poles and informed our knowledge of climate change?
Chair, Introduction: Dr Katrina Dean, Curator of History of Science, British Library
Speaker 1: Simon Naylor, University of Exeter, Data in Antarctic Science and Politics
Speaker 2: Dr Dennis Wheeler, University of Sunderland, The Arctic climatic record: new data from old sources
Speaker 3: Alice Angus, Proboscis, Landscapes in Dialogue
12.00 Keynote: Professor Sverker Sorlin, Royal Academy of Swedish Sciences, Historicizing Climate and Arcticality
12.30 Lunch
13.15 Session 5: Climate Spatialities
Chair, Introduction: Professor Klaus Dodds, Royal Holloway, University of London
Speaker 1: Edward Morris, The Canary Project
Speaker 2: Weather Permitting: Jennifer Gabrys & Kathryn Yusoff, Forecast Factory: Snow Globes and Climate Change
Speaker 3: Jane D. Marsching, Artist, Climate Commons, Arctic Listening Post: technology, imagination, and our furthest north
14.30 Session 6: Exploration Narratives
Between the field and the archive lies the exploration narrative that attempts to capture the fleeting and precarious existence of exploreration at the Poles. How do these narratives gather and assemble assorted facts in the course of explorers travels? How do explorers&Mac226; narratives interact with histories of science and to what extent do such narratives compensate for the nature of the polar experience?
Chair, Introduction: Dr Michael Bravo
Speaker 1: Dr Bernard Stonehouse, SPRI, University of Cambridge/Maritime Historical Studies Centre, University of Hull, Arctic exploration: the whalers’ view
Speaker 2: Dr Matthew Kurtz, Open University Arctic Climate Change and Inupiat Witnesses: Reconstructing the Subaltern?
Speaker 3: Emilie Cameron, Queens University, Stopping place: producing geographies of significance in the Canadian Arctic
15.45 Tea
16.00 Keynote: Professor Rachel Weiss, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Tall Tales, Apocryphal Visions and Hoaxes: Why Antarctica Makes Us Make It Up
16.30 Artists Talk – Simon Faithfull, Artist, British Antarctic Survey/Arts Council of England Artist & Writers Fellow, Ice Blink
17.00 End
Images:
Left & second left: Photo Kathryn Yusoff, 2nd from right: London Fieldworks, Polaria fieldwork NE Greenland (photo Anthony Oliver)
Far right: Anne Brodie, Wastegloo
