« We are working in the Arctic since 2010. Our first interest was the global warming and the geopolitical and geostrategic questions that are related to it. We went to Kirkenes, a small city in the north of Norway situated at the Russian border, on the sea of Barents, which is the biggest unexploited oil and gas reserves in Europe. Kirkenes is a place where the global warming is a chance, and is a synonymous of economic development. The ice melt opens new roads for the maritime commercial transport and Kirkenes is very well situated and owns a deep water harbor. It is quite like Singapore whose richness has been made on its strategic position. The difference is that Kikenes has a lot of resources: oil, gas, forest, fish, and ores. We set up a camera that watches the city and the harbor, in order to assist to the economic and urban development of the city. The stream is public and the entire world can have access to it on our website.
At this time, on June 1012, Deep Water Horizon was discharging tones of brut in the Golf of Mexico. Kirkenes is at the margin but could probably become a center. The margins are really interesting for two reasons that might come more and more crucial in the future: food and the energy.
In May 2012, we are fleeting for Svalbard to get closer to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, the most pessimistic bank of seeds in the world that keeps a double of each seeds used in food crops. This safe-deposit box could resist a nuclear attack. What seems strange to us is that this survivalist initiative has been financed by the stakeholders of the worldwide agribusiness as Monsanto or Syngenta and by foundations linked to the “New Green Revolution” as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. What we can say is that this Seed Vault is one of the most worrying signs of what some elites have in mind about the future of the world’s food. Despite our efforts, we didn’t manage to enter the Vault. This place stays completely mysterious. We started to see Svalbard as a giant back-up of a biocentered humanity making its evolution in air-conditioned and designed on demand environment. The fridge world, a promise of death and eternity.
On the other side of the archipelago is located Ny Ålesund, an inhabited place situated at the most northern point of the world. 78°55’N. An International Research Station for the polar studies is based there. Time stretches on a stunning beautiful untouched landscape and we decided to set up our new camera with the idea that we opened a “live” window on those landscapes during our expositions, the idea that we work with a kind of a wall transparency. Selling the stream address of this camera to a collector brings out a lot of questions. It is a privilege and a lux to live with the Artic since Paris, London, Dubai. It is a window through the seasons, the equinox, the day, the night, the ice, the melt, birds. Is it a modern way to sell dematerialized properties? Is it the first step to a kind of viewshare, in reference to the timeshare, which is a real estate practice that was really famous in the 80’s? Or is it a direct way, 24/24, to the show of the global warming, to the melt in the Arctic? »
