The Polar Retrospective – An Icelandic exhibition in Greenland, the history of the most important ocean current and Nunavut on the show
The Polar Retrospective looks at recent stories from around the world’s polar regions. This week we look at an exhibition on the crest line between art and science by an Icelandic artist in Greenland, a new study tracing 800,000 years of climate-ocean interaction in the Southern Ocean and a Netflix series that takes place in an Inuit community.
The Polar Retrospective is a collaborative effort by the editorial team of polarjournal.net. Each writer chooses a topic they found interesting and important in the past week. The initials at the end of each section indicate the author. We hope you enjoy it.
Anna Lindal in Ilulissat: a sensitive glaciology behind the scenes
Last Saturday and Sunday, the Ilulissat ILLU Art and Science Centre hosted an exhibition by Icelandic artist Anna Lindal. A series of tracings combines her artistic approach with that of the Glaciological Society’s expeditions to the Vatnajökull glacier.
Embroidered pieces of fabric reproduce topographical maps on which we can see the lines of a swim. In 2013, the artist immersed herself in the lakes of the Grímsvötn caldera, located on the glacier, after an avalanche. The water was at 0°C and the air at 5°C.
“We can experiment with nature using different methods,” she explains. “One of the principles of this work is to use my body as a measuring tool.”
Other works echo the wanderings of geologists on the glacier. More linear, printed on paper, they show the scientific activity with a more detached eye. It’s as if the artist has slipped into the shoes of an ethnographer telling a story in trajectories.
The methodical shapes come from measurements of the thickness of the glacier. The more random ones resemble trampling near the camp. Characteristics of the thinking?
One of the purest movements in the serie is a round trip, produced by the discovery of an outcropping of rock that stayed under the ice for thousands of years. “This is a very obvious mark of climate change,” she comment.
Ten years after her first exhibition at the Ilulissat Art Museum, Anna Lindal is back to this city, at the ILLU Center of art and Science, continuing her work between the two islands, separated by the sea and linked by the Arctic Circle: Iceland and Greenland. C.L.
How the Antarctic Circumpolar Current has responded to climate changes over the past 800,000 years
An international research team led by the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) has reconstructed how the Antarctic Circumpolar Current responded to climate changes over the past 790,000 years, using marine sediment cores. The new findings are intended to help improve the accuracy of climate models.
As the most powerful ocean current on Earth, the Circumpolar Current connects the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans. It influences global heat and nutrient transport, the carbon cycle of the oceans, and the global overturning circulation.
The analysis of sediment cores from the Cape Horn Current off the coast of southern Chile reveals a pattern across eight glacial cycles of the late Pleistocene: whenever the sea surface in the Southern Ocean warmed, the Circumpolar Current intensified. During colder phases, by contrast, it weakened.
In addition, the study confirms a climatic interplay between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres – known as the “bipolar seesaw”: as the Southern Ocean warmed, the North Atlantic cooled, likely as a result of changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This pattern occurred not only during the last glacial cycle but persisted as a stable feature over the past 800,000 years.
The findings provide new evidence of the strong interactions between the Southern Ocean, Atlantic circulation, and atmospheric carbon dioxide. The Circumpolar Current has consistently played a key role in the exchange of water masses between ocean basins and significantly influenced the carbon exchange between ocean and atmosphere.
These long-term patterns are once again becoming evident today: the Southern Ocean is measurably warming, the Circumpolar Current is accelerating – while the Atlantic overturning circulation is weakening. J.H.
‘North of North’ finally available worldwide
Since April 10, the series North of North is finally available worldwide on the streaming platform. Polar afficionados and curious alike will be delighted by the series’ sincere and humorous look at an Inuit community.
Siaja (Anna Lambe) has just left her golden boy husband. Together with her daughter Bun (Keira Cooper), she now lives with her mother and is trying to build a future for herself in the fictional Nunavut town of Ice Cove. In this community of 2 000 souls, however, it’s not easy to make a place for yourself when everyone knows everything.
Filmed in Iqualuit, Nunavut, the series was released last January on Netflix Canada, where it met with great success, before being included in the platform’s worldwide catalog.
Written and produced by Alethea Arnaquq-Barie and Stacey Aglok MacDonald, the eight episodes of North of North offer delightful dialogues punctuated by Inuktitut, and present an Inuit community through a gallery of funny, endearing characters far removed from clichés.
A real nugget, North of North fills a void where stories about Inuit by Inuit are so rare in films or series. A must-see. M.B.
