The traditional image of the Arctic as vast virgin lands of pristine white landscapes that has been the scene for brave and selfless heroes of nations no longer fully meets our  growing awareness of catastrophically  melting ice and species extinction. Why has the Arctic been depicted as timeless for centuries when in fact it has been a site of Imperial desire and riches for European courts and now global powers? Why are we so prone to project our utopian dreams onto the Arctic - despite its ice melting?

Artists and writers recognise the Arctic as a powerful creative force with incredible potential to repair the damage that has already been done by humanity. This panel discussion with artist Ruth Maclennan, writer Michael Bravo and philosopher Esther Leslie explores different perspectives of thinking about the Arctic and why it matters for us. The discussion will be chaired by ‘Icebreaker Dreaming’ curator Elena Zaytseva.

Many of the explorers who dedicated their lives to unlocking the secrets of the poles were not merely the hardy lovers of precarious adventure or the ardent national heroes they have often been made out to be. A lifetime of knocking on the door of the North Pole led explorers themselves to reflect deeply on the nature of their endeavour, and to appreciate that theirs was a personal and moral quest more clearly rooted in paradox and ambiguity. Michael Bravo

Is there a way in which ice, melting and hardening, provides the basis for a method of analysis? Ice is frozen solid, or ice is in movement between states. Ice is multiply contradictory - either, on the one hand, eternal and changeable or, on the other, endlessly changing. These propensities occur, now, within an evolving context of industrial capitalism, which feeds into questions of temperature, flow and freeze. Within such volatility, ideologies and poetries accrete, such that ice becomes metaphorical, stands in for something else. If this process of becoming icy metaphor is pursued, one might develop a ‘polar thinking’, or a thermal perception. I ask what ice comes after ice as we know it is gone? What is the afterlife of ice, and also its afterthought? Esther Leslie

‘Icebreakers are feats of technological prowess, built to defeat the arctic environment, and therefore vulnerable to global warming as sea ice disappears. Icebreakers seem obvious and heavy, yet also ambiguous, melancholy. The ship makes the connections we need, to see that we can intervene to change things. Dreaming through the icebreaker enables me to see clearly a vivid, colossal, metaphor of the destructive carbon fuelled capitalism we live with.  Nuclear-powered, it facilitates frictionless journeys through the Arctic, opening up routes for oil and gas to be extracted and delivered to Europe and the Far East.’ Ruth Maclennan

Ruth Maclennan is an artist whose exhibition ‘Icebreaker Dreaming’ is open at Pushkin House from 21 November 2019 until 8 February 2020. Her work includes films, video installations, photography, bookworks, performance and curatorial projects. She is currently Research Associate at Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge University. Solo exhibitions and commissions include Anarcadia for FVU and John Hansard Gallery, which toured nationally and to international film festivals, The Faces They Have Vanished, ICIA and James Hockey Gallery supported by a Joanna Drew Award. Her interdisciplinary, collaborative projects include State of Mind at London School of Economics (Wellcome Trust, ACE funded), and Leverhulme residency in the LSE Archives, and the site-based project, Archway Polytechnic. Group exhibitions include Somewhere Becoming Sea (FVU, Hull City of Culture), Interspecies (Arts Catalyst, Cornerhouse), Central Asian Project (Cornerhouse, SPACE), The Body. The Ruin. (Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne). Her work has been exhibited widely in Europe, USA, Japan, Australia and Central Asia, Korea and Taiwan. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Wellcome Collection and Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel. She has a PhD (RCA), MFA (Goldsmiths), and MA (Cambridge). Her work is included in numerous monographs and she has produced several bookworks. LUX Artists’ Moving Image distributes her films. Ruth Maclennan is currently Research Associate at Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge University. She also teaches Moving Image at Central Saint Martins and Open College of the Arts. 

Esther Leslie is a Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, Univrersity of London. Her books include Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant Garde (Verso, 2002); Synthetic Worlds: Nature, Art and the Chemical Industry (Reaktion, 2005); Derelicts: Thought Worms from the Wreckage (Unkant, 2014), Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form (Reaktion, 2016) and Deeper in the Pyramid (with Melanie Jackson: Banner Repeater, 2018).

Michael Bravo (Cambridge University) is Head of Circumpolar History and Public Policy Research at the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge and serves on its Senior Management Group. He is author of the acclaimed North Pole: Nature and Culture (2019) recently published by Reaktion Books. It has been described in New Scientist as a “rich and insightful” book that “charts the layers of meaning that the pole has accumulated in our minds”, and by the Literary Review of Canada as “an exhaustively researched history of that northward obsession”. In June 2014, he launched with Canadian partners an online Pan-Inuit Trails Atlas spanning the Canadian Arctic drawing on maps drawn by Inuit from land claims and historical literature. His work has frequently featured in the media including recent programmes on BBC Radio 3, BBC World Service, and CBC. His books include Narrating the Arctic (2002) and Arctic Geopolitics and Autonomy (2011).