Conference Announcement and Call for Papers
2007 Polar Archive Symposium
19-20 November 2007
London, UK

Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 August 2007
Please provide:
a) Title and abstract of you presentation/paper for programme publication (up to 500 words) - each presentation will be 20 mins long
b) An indication of which session you would prefer to be in
c) A short bio – up to 150 words

Contact: Kathryn Yusoff
E-mail: [log in to unmask]

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THE POLAR ARCHIVES: Curating Climate Change

Polar regions are both exceptional to and considered representative of the developments in global climate change and climate change science. Given the important claims and policy decisions based on the polar archive, it is timely to consider the way in which our knowledge of this archive has been produced, especially in relation to the field arts & sciences. Historically, control of polar archives and landscapes has gone hand in hand. Recent work suggests that this archive and the landscapes represented therein could be structured and interpreted in alternative ways, for example by changing the boundaries, systems of classification and uses of the archive. This might give rise to alternative visions and uses of polar landscapes and their connection to a wider global picture. Such alternatives might reveal structures underpinning climate change science and politics, allowing more effective responses to its challenges.

In winter 2007, the Open University in association with the British Library and Arts Catalyst with international partners, propose a multi-disciplinary project exploring cultural and scientific issues surrounding climate change in the context of the International Polar Year (2007-08). The project is supported by a grant from the Arts Council, England, the Open University and in-kind support from the British Library

Drawing together people from the arts, science and humanities with various expertise in climate change research and polar art, geography and history, The Polar Archives will develop a concerted response to polar regions in the context of environmental change. It aims to strengthen and extend existing international research networks and partnerships and will open these discussions to a wider public audience.


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Symposium: The POLAR Archive
19-20 November 2007 at the British Library, London

POLAR will be an interdisciplinary symposium focusing on the curation and production of climate change knowledge in the polar regions, within the context of the IPY. This will bring together scientists, writers, artists, historians and social scientists with interests in knowledge about the polar landscape and its broader implications for global climate and society. It will consist of a symposium held over two days jointly organised by Dr Kathryn Yusoff (Open University) and Dr Katrina Dean (Curator of the History of Science, British Library). Attendees are invited to a symposium dinner.

Drawing together recent discussions in the arts, sciences and humanities on themes of climate change, the polar landscape, data, time, entropy and technologies of inscription and reading, the symposium will facilitate a broad conversation on the archives and fields of climate change. We will invite participants to work with the concepts, assumptions, histories, materials and theories scientists, artists and scholars in the humanities and social sciences use to characterise the polar field and the archives of climate change.
Conference Themes: archives, Arctic, Antarctic, artist, data, field, fieldwork, field station, climate, curation, ice cores, ice, International Polar Year (IPY), inscription, instrumentation, landscape, mapping, museum, narration, pole, scientist, visualisation, weather.
Specifically, presentations & papers are invited around the following themes. Each session will have a discussant.

The Core
Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica are among the most startling and challenging archives discovered in recent times. Ice cores contain the climate history of the planet. The ice core is a timeline, including pre-history (Earth history) and human history. What does the core tell us about climate change and how do we get this knowledge from the core? How is the core extracted, curated, interpreted into the discourse of climate change? What is the nature of ‘core’ histories?

Edge Spaces: Outer Space & Polar Space
The poles have moved from the periphery to the centre of histories of the Earth. At first conceived as the habitats of extremity and legend, they have been filled in with maps of human and geophysical experience. The purpose of this section of the workshop is to chart the poles chronologically and thematically with reference to different kinds of charts: explorers’, imaginative geographies of outer & inner space, geopolitical, resource, and climate.

Exploration Narratives & Images
Between the field and the archive lie exploration narratives and images that attempt to capture the fleeting and precarious existence of exploration at the Poles. How do these narratives gather and assemble assorted facts in the course of explorers’ travels? How do explorers’ narratives and artists images interact with histories of science and to what extent do such narratives compensate for the nature of the polar experience?

Instruments & Spaces of Curation
Explorers since the nineteenth century have sought to measure, sample and ‘bring back’ the poles to field stations, observatories, museums and laboratories for comparison and analysis. How do instruments enable the curation of the polar landscape through methods of extraction, recording, and classification? How do the things that pass through the instruments of curation come to stand for the Poles?

Worlds of Data
The climate model is only the latest iteration of centuries of numerical calculation of climate parameters and variables. How does this numerical processing produce syntheses and trends from the disassembled experiences and extractions of polar exploration and science. What techniques of organisation and theoretical assumptions underpin the processing of data? How have these changed over time, and how has this changed our perception of the Poles and informed our knowledge of climate change?

Polar Imaginations
Public interest in and knowledge of the Poles has always been mediated by cultural productions, from plays and artworks to natural history documentaries. How do these productions inform our images of the poles and how have these changed over time? Further, how do such cultural outputs themselves support the willingness of publics to fund and engage in polar exploration and science? How do they help us to understand the complex science and cultural effects of climate change?

Advisory Committee: Dr Michael Bravo (Cambridge University/SPRI), Dr Nigel Clark (Open University) Professor Klaus Dodd (Royal Holloway, University of London), Dr Simon Naylor (Exeter University) Nicola Triscott (Arts Catalyst)

Keynote Speaker: Professor Denis Cosgrove, Alexander Von Humboldt Chair, University of California, Los Angeles


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Publication
A cross-sector book aimed at an arts and public audience, with relevance for an academic readership will be published from the symposium. Selected participants will be invited to contribute a one-page “archive” to the publication. The book will be full colour, soft bound, with an estimated 70 pages of images and text. We plan a print run of 1000. The audiences for the book are: Art / Science / Visual Anthropology/ Geography/ Cultural Studies.

The book will be edited by Kathryn Yusoff, with a forward by Nicola Triscott (The Arts Catalyst), and a selection of invited essays/archive entries by seminar participants.

Publication “Archive” Proposal Deadline: 10 September 2007

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A Season of Climate Change talks at the British Library

The art and science of climate change
A series of four public lectures at the British Library will address the broader cultural and policy-related themes arising from the symposium.

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Wednesday 17 October 2007

Disasters of the Everyday
Climate change is often characterised by images of ice-shelf collapse and disaster scenarios. This discussion will concentrate on everyday disasters, those small and shifting changes that effect life on every scale. We will explore the issues of biodiversity through the mutations of amphibians, bird migrations and the shifting climatic zones that force ordinary people to make heroic journeys.
Discussant: Dr Nigel Clark, Geography, Open University
Speaker:Brandon Ballengée, Artist, Biodiversity & Migration
Speaker: Bob Spicer, Earth Scientist, Open University, climateprediction.net

Monday 5th November 2007
Climate Change & Human Rights
The interdependence of earth systems often means that environments are effected by pollution and climatic changes that happen in the distant past and far-away locations. Inuit activists have been protesting that the right to be cold is part of their basic human rights, which is being diminished by global warming caused by pollution emanating from other parts of the world. This session will ask the question: What are our responsibilities to other people whose lives are being impacted on by our actions? How do these particular rights to be cold exist alongside the universally invoked rights of all and of future generations?

Discussant: Dr Michael Bravo, Cambridge University, author of Narrating the Arctic (2002)
Speaker: (tbc)

Monday 19th November 2007
The New Iconography of Climate Change
Ice cores, glaciers, field stations can be thought of as an archives and spaces of knowledge that inform how we imagine and shape our collective futures. In this session we will have a ‘show and tell’ of different ice libraries from senior scientists and artists, and debate how these archives might well claim to hold the world’s knowledge.

Discussant: Professor Denis Cosgrove, Alexander Von Humboldt Chair, University of California, Los Angeles
Speakers: Dr Eric Wolff, Senior Ice core specialist, British Antarctic Survey
Professor Stephan Harrison, Glaciologist, Exeter University / Oxford University
Marko Peljhan, Artist, MakroLab


Monday 26 November
Geopolitics of Cold
The history of the poles has emerged through national rivalry and international co-operation, often articulated through science and exploration. In the context of the International Polar Year, how do shifting climatic zones correspond to the governance of national and international territories?

Discussant: Christine McGourty (BBC / polar correspondent)
Speakers: Professor Doreen Massey, FRSA FBA, Open University, most recently author of World City (2007)
Professor Klaus Dodds, Royal Holloway, University of London, Author of Pink Ice (2002) and numerous articles on geopolitics and British Antarctic interests


Further information will be available shortly on
http://www.artscatalyst.org/




Dr Kathryn Yusoff
Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Geography
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Open University
Walton Hall
Milton Keynes
MK7 6AA
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