Rhianon Morgan-Hatch

The Arctic is at melting point. The steady decline of sea ice paves the way for sovereign and corporate interest in oil exploration and exploitation. The scene is set for ownership of the Arctic: here is an opportunity for architecture. Is it possible to see 'the now' by looking forward? Is it possible to identify key protagonists within the contemporary situation and to use visual narratives as a means to disconnect and reconnect them, revealing underlying structures of power?

In an imagined future, geopolitical trajectories can be played out in order to explore what lies ahead for the inhabitants of the Arctic. Architectures will emerge and ultimately mobilise economic and corporate agendas, but there will no doubt be a backlash in the form of activism that will see the Arctic as a potential no mans land. The indigenous Inuit populations will demand an ethical approach to their ancestral home – and perhaps they too still stand to make a profit!

Roaming research stations are deployed into the landscape to record environmental transformations, but as these machines are re-appropriated and transformed, through the interactions of the protagonists, they begin to produce odd-shaped constellations, enabling the Arctic to be seen from a multiplicity of differing perspectives.

By reconfiguring relationships amongst the protagonists, revealing and playing upon mechanisms of control, it becomes possible to construct a future history of the Arctic.