Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The article examines the feedback between the melting Svalbard Archipelago and the sensory and technological apparatuses through which it is perceived, considered through the lens of Susan Schuppli’s short conceptual film Not Planet Earth from 2021. Consisting of eleven shots made during a circumnavigation of Spitsbergen the previous year, Not Planet Earth offers a series of didactic reflections on how to visualize the process of Arctic warming, which primarily transpires on wavelengths below the small sliver of light accessible to human eyesight. The film responds to this challenge by utilizing the camera as a thermographic or seismographic tool. Transforming glitching recordings and image artifacts into environmental stress signals, it prompts the sensor’s system failures to act as proxies for the anthropogenically induced system failure of the planet.
Source: Poljarnyj vestnik
DOI: 10.7557/6.8885
Author: Henrik Gustafsson
Institution: UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W7225411661