Join artist-in-residence Ashley Middleton for the second participatory workshop at Hotellneset.
This session extends Reimagining Arctic Landscapes into the energetic systems sustaining life in Svalbard, a continuous field of exchange between body and landscape. Through a series of embodiment practices, short walks, and drawing exercises, participants explore how energy oscillates between material and immaterial form, tracing the inseparability of body and environment.
The workshop reflects on how extraction reshapes the biological and energetic conditions of life. Through shared discussion and drawing, participants consider how energy production leaves traces that extend beyond industry — altering ecologies, influencing metabolism, and folding the body into wider systems of exchange.
Opening space for dialogue on Svalbard’s shifting energy future, the session invites collective reflection on the visible and invisible networks that sustain the archipelago. Together we imagine how these currents might evolve, and what new forms of relation, adaptation, and care could emerge.
Participants: max 8, open to all. No prior experience required.
Date/Time: Friday November 21 from 17:00 - 20:00
Location: Meet at the foot of the old coal crane (Titan krana) at Hotellnesset
What to Bring: Wam Clothes, Boots, Headlamp, Water, Art Supplies of your choice (there will be supplies provided, but if you have something you want to bring please do so)
To book: workshops@articasvalbard.no
What to Expect
The workshop will last around three hours and include a warm shared light meal. We will meet at the foot of the old coal crane (Titan krana) at Hotellnesset and walk together to our space of shelter, where we’ll share food and introduce the ideas guiding our exploration.
After outlining the structure, we will begin the first cycle with a five-minute visual meditation to tune into the body, followed by a slow 15-minute walk guided by our polar safety leader. Returning to shelter, we’ll move into a ten-minute silent creative session and a brief five-minute sharing.
These cycles will repeat three times, creating a rhythm of reflection and renewal. The workshop will close with a simple collective reflection, bringing awareness to the shared field of thought and connection we’ve created.
Series Context
This series invites participants into a practice of walking, sensing, and listening with the Arctic landscape—rooted in the understanding that energy flows are not only infrastructure or resource, but lived, embodied phenomena. Drawing on slow presence, somatic awareness, and attention to how the terrain and our bodies co-constitute each other, we will explore the porous boundaries between inside and outside, movement and stillness. Through bodies in motion, material fields of extraction, and shared acts of attunement, this series seeks to imagine futures for Svalbard that are less about control or domination and more about relation and transformation.
Future workshops will be announced via the Artica Svalbard website and social media channels.