The End of Reference

Since 2022 I have undertaken three art and science field-research expeditions to the High Arctic Svalbard Archipelago. At only 500-miles south of the North Pole, Svalbard is warming seven times faster than the global average; it is ground zero of climate change. The Svalbard archipelago with 60% of its land covered by glaciers, is a place where global climate systems, colonial legacies, and geopolitical tensions intersect. While scientific study is driven by the urgent need to understand climate change and its effects, a question I continue to reflect on is what histories melt away unnoticed when we look at ice?

This talk will give an overview of my ongoing research in this region that has been shaped by extractive colonial practices, scientific erasure, and geopolitical power plays. A region where the climate crisis is now reactivating these dynamics in new forms, with melting glaciers as both a symbol and symptom.

Symposium theme:
The arts and creative disciplines offer essential ways of knowing and doing in the context of climate emergency. The research symposium “Lines of Flight” will query the lines of inquiry needed today within research and related practices aimed at ecological and societal impact.

Where are fault lines or gaps in our knowledges? How are we drawing other knowledges into our disciplines, how are we aligning with or redirecting others? What relevant knowledges, assemblages, movements and pathways are emerging? These are some of the questions for research that we will explore, aligned with UAL 2026 Earth Week theme ‘Fault Lines’. The symposium will gather researchers from across colleges and disciplines at UAL (spanning the arts, humanities, design, fashion, spatial and creative fields) engaging with ecological issues. Together, we will share examples, experiences and ideas about doing and developing such research.

The symposium will comprise lively and varied formats. A keynote session will take place in an interactive and dialogic way including the audience. Multiple sessions will showcase the work of UAL researchers, who will engage with one another and the audience around common themes. The symposium will conclude with a strategic panel of UAL research leaders discussing what it takes to secure and sustain research projects and collaboration.

The research symposium “Lines of Flight” is organized by UAL’s researcher network EARTH (Ecological Arts Research Transdisciplinary Hive)