Ghosts of the Arctic

2023

Summary

An experimental speculative short film/essay that lasts for 17.11 minutes. It incorporates a collage of various film footage, audio, sound, and written elements to explore concepts of time, borders, and ideologies. The work is influenced by a residency experience in Svalbard, during the darkless summer days and nights of the High Arctic in 2022.

The film is accompanied by photographic images, objects, and documents from the abandoned Soviet coal mining town of Pyramiden in Svalbard, which contribute to an eerie atmosphere and a sense of place.

Titled 'Ghosts of the Arctic’, the project follows the life of fictional artist Edward Knorr and the search for his missing works by the fictional art critic Albert Bernstein. The journey spans from the Baltic states to North-East England and then to the Soviet Arctic, interweaving themes of loss, love, war, and social and political turmoil in lost imagined futures and viewed in an era where memories are commodified.

The 'short film' explores the perspectives of both a witness and a researcher. Time, reality, truth, and fiction are fragmented and urgently presented through various characters and voices, incorporating elements of speculative fiction, autobiography, lived experiences, and the lingering presence of the past and future.

The author grapples with questions of authenticity, ownership, and control over archives and memories, assuming the roles of a forecaster, documenter, philosopher, confessionalist, and historian. More questions than answers are presented as is often the case in contemporary art.

The conceptual exploration of the project draws on essayistic documentary filmmaking, Hauntology, collage techniques, memory studies, colonialism, and psychogeography. It combines photography, film, text, sound, painting, narrative voice, and found footage to create assemblages, images, and artifacts that explore both real and imagined landscapes in a time seemingly marked by post-capitalist decline.

The project contributes to the advancement of the academically acknowledged practice-led research methodology by employing an innovative approach in the form of a speculative film essay. Through the intertwining of autobiographical, personal, and political elements, the project produces a distinctive and original piece within the Avant-garde genre and methodology.

Additionally, the project addresses one of the most pressing issues of our time, referencing a location where observers can witness the melting of glaciers and the evident impact of climate change. There is an urgency that demands attention at the core of this project.

'Ghosts of the Arctic’, as with recent previous projects, is created by the publicly anonymous Kotzebue Kollective and produced by the equally secretive Katka Films, each guided by their own collaborative and collective approaches to authorship, labor, and ownership.