alternaa (Andra Pop-Jurj & Lena Geerts Danau)

»Monsters and Ghosts of the Far North« searches for an alternative cartography through which we can rethink relationships across species in the Arctic region, and beyond.

Points of departure for this project are some of the spatial manifestations of the social, economic, and geopolitical conflicts in the Arctic region caused by environmental degradation. The Arctic is a site of intense geopolitical and infrastructural intrigue, with incompatible and interlocking border claims rooted in colonial and cartographic history. The scientific and cartographic artifacts encountered throughout our research have proven to be flat and exclusive in essence, and they often fail to capture the dynamic nature of the Arctic. Through this project, we question the division of our world and the meaning of current rigid borderlines within distorted, often Eurocentric cartographic projections.

The project employs a game engine to inquire into modes of multispecies cohabitation and the negotiation of space following the development of extractive industries in the region. As an interactive multiplayer experience, the embodiment of various non-human characters seeks to challenge our current anthropocentric perception. Wildlife tracking data and environmental projections feed into the design of this digital environment and serve as inter-scalar vehicles and trans-temporal narrative devices that tell the story of global entanglements. Consequently, one can come to feel endangered – an overwhelming feeling that emerges from an immersive narrative, going beyond the agendas of the five Arctic states and their overlapping territorial claims.