From Tarandus to Longyearbyen: Residents meet in the Field

Last week, Artica residents Annike Flo and Lexie Owen joined a field trip towards Reindalen to collect Jess Mountfield at the end of her stay at the Tarandus field cabin and accompany her on the return journey to Longyearbyen. The trip was led by experienced Artica staff member Sally Hovelsø, who has extensive knowledge of travelling and working in Svalbard’s landscape.

The journey offered Annike and Lexie an opportunity to experience the landscape and research environment of the Tarandus Field-Based Residency, Artica’s collaborative art–science programme with the University Centre in Svalbard (UNIS), while also bringing together residents whose research approaches Svalbard from different but intersecting perspectives.

Jess has been living and working at Tarandus, around 40 km south of Longyearbyen, developing her research into time through scientific, cultural and multi-species perspectives. Her work considers the many overlapping temporal rhythms of the Arctic—from geological deep time to the cycles of reindeer, lichen, weather, light and other living systems.

Annike and Lexie are currently based at Artica in Longyearbyen, where they are developing their ongoing collaborative research into death cultures, decomposition and the afterlives of bodies. In Svalbard, their research is engaging with the particular conditions of permafrost, burial and a rapidly changing landscape, exploring how environmental transformation complicates familiar distinctions between life and death.

These kinds of trips out in to nature are an important part of Artica’s residency programme—creating opportunities for residents to encounter one another’s research, exchange perspectives and experience different ways of working in and with Svalbard.