Julia de COOKER
Svalbard, an Arcticficial Life
Netherlands
Not far from the North Pole, lives a facinating society. About two thousands inhabitants in Longyearbyen, making it one of the northern cities of out planet. Men arrived there in the twentieth century to exploit coal mines. The archipelago of Svalbard has no native people, one of the few places exempt of ancestral tradition. The human recent history is sacred. All remnants are preserved undamaged. The juxtaposition of elements not meant to stand alongside is relevant, it constrasts with the feeling of strange normality inspired by the place. We could expect that life there holds something less ordinary. Yet, strangeness sprinkles. One could be surprised by the normality of daily life, not matching what one could excpect in these latitudes.
