“Beyond Nature and Culture” by Philippe Descola…
Following this reading, this Arctic journey seeks out otherness, documenting both fiction and reality to make the microscopic resonate with the macroscopic—and perhaps to find meaning in the expression ‘to take place’, so singularly expressed here.

A first encounter with the disappearance of scale, here, in the polar night, at almost ±66° North, in -20°C temperatures, with a wind chill far lower in the blizzard…”

All sensations point to the incommensurable indistinction between the immense beauty and the crystalline detail of this endless night, despite frozen fingers and the mental fatigue brought on by polar disorientation…

Seemingly out of reach at first, a reef turns out to be easily crossed in three steps, while a topographic break, deceptively modest in appearance, reveals its gargantuan scale, inviting humility and reverence for this fragile land, as I attempt to cross it, climb it, or descend from it.

Likewise, the Indigenous people — so generous and warm-hearted in this world of relative simplicity and apparent spatial freedom — embody a culture and craftsmanship of remarkable delicacy.

Yet their traditions are being undermined by neocolonialism and climate change.

Hunting and fishing are directly impacted by melting ice, water pollution, mining exploration, and the new Silk Roads. These pressures result in numerous adaptive challenges and significant daily hardships for the local populations — yet one is stunned by their remarkable ability to cultivate collective responses and mutual aid systems rooted in the local context.

Here, the sonic dialogue between these two geographic entities — Erem and Ecumene — which still coexist both economically and symbolically (the Erem having long since vanished from most of the Western world), invites a narration of friction — fiction with an “air” ! — whose process of collection and storytelling combines sound recordings from the cryogenic environment (ice, snow, sea ice, frazil ice…), with subtle details of the internal dynamics at play in the cannibalism of melting ice caps. These are mixed with environmental captures that evoke distance, human activity, and its impact on the surroundings, including the stunning acoustic presence of oil in the soundscape.

Far from adopting a “naturalist” approach— which I leave to far more qualified specialists— and despite the magnificent fauna of ravens, seaguls, Arctic foxes, eiders, and the last remaining sterns, it was this play of friction between Erem and Ecumene that occupied me for five weeks long.

In parallel with these pieces, in the cold and darkness, I developed in-situ narratives that led to the creation of two radio works: Anori (meaning “wind” in Kalaallisut) and Siku (“ice”). The sonic experience with ice was also processed during the darkest, coldest hours of the polar night — when, confined by harsh weather conditions and the inevitable isolation such circumstances bring, I found shelter in the artists’ cabin in Akunnaaq.

Two other experimental pieces, Radio-Storm and Foreshadows, were recorded using whatever tools were at hand: ice (used as resonating sheets, improvised drums, etc.), a small curved soprano saxophone, a modular radio setup (SW & FM), and a little wave oscillator. All sounds were captured on a Sound Devices MixPre using Aquarian hydrophones and compact field-recording microphones in various mono and stereo configurations (DPA 4060, 4099, and EARSIGHT).

A profound exchange took place during an immersive concert held in the village’s small Baptist chapel, where a respected elder was able to voice her questions about the manipulation of ice within a syncretic context — where shamanism and Protestantism converge — shaped here by a Western artist.

This deeply moved and inspired me for the continuation of the work, and it continues to stimulate today my purpose. The mastering process is currently underway, and the works will soon be available on major streaming platforms as well as in physical formats by the end of 2025.

The second part of the artistic work, the photographic documentation, followed a strict protocol relatively similar to the sonic approach, that is, a macro/micro dialogue within the spaces and places explored. First, a single very bright focal length in 35mm only was used to capture the details of the polar night, with a systematically vertical framing in black and white, like portraits or street photography, even though there are no streets, or very few, in the Arctic environment. Most of the pictures where captured without tripod.

A deliberate choice, the abandonment of color — so subtle and beautiful in the Arctic — was a necessary decision to highlight spatial questions. Portrait-mode landscape photography allowed me to evoke the off-frame much more fluidly than with a landscape framing, or a “naturalist” approach, with its expectations of collapsing icebergs or glaciers, pitfalls of the spectacular and exoticizing extractivist documentation in the most questionable Western tradition.

Finally, to testify that things “take place,” a series of counter-fictional maps was, and is stil created, using watercolor, incorporating opposites such as salt-honey, liquid-solid, hot-cold, black-white, with the aim of resonating in harmony with both sound and image memories of this land.

Upon my return, I extended this graphic work into miniature watercolors on frozen glass plates, in the manner of a laboratory technician examining the structure of ice cores under a microscope. A series of macro-photographs emerged from this, resonating with the work done locally.