Arctic Diaries: Plague Ship Takes Pack Ice

& some thoughts on creative egos

Hello from land! The trip is now over - I’m a little behind due to covid brain fog and general lack of writing time. My covid ended up being rougher and more prolonged than I’d hoped, but I’m finally through the thick of it. So, now, catching up on trip reports and flashing back to last Sunday, when our expedition leader announced that we would be heading north for the pack ice. The combination of cheers and coughs in the room was a thing to behold.

Pack ice refers to the slabs of frozen sea water around the North Pole. The possibility of visiting it had been floated (sorry, couldn’t help myself), but it was weather dependent and our expedition leader carefully refrained from making promises. But there had been murmurs, and now it was confirmed: to the pack ice we’d go. Getting there would involve a night of crossing through heavy winds and rough seas - a daunting prospect for the seasick-prone and especially those already weathering covid. (A group I’d count myself among.)

We were told to secure all belongings in our cabins to prevent unpleasant crashes. The ship tended to start moving during dinner, which I’m sure made sense from a timing and sailing perspective but from a nausea-prone perspective was tough. At dinner, there was much discussion about preferred prophylactics: Scopolamine patches, magnetic bands, Dramamine, Bonine, Zofran, etc. Usually I’m a fan of Scopolamine patches - I use them on dive trips - but early on in this trip my pupils grew very dilated and my vision blurred and that seemed like a sign to take off the patch. I stepped away in the middle of dinner to take a Zofran.

After dinner, we gathered in the bar for our standard evening meeting. The boat began rocking with the swell of the waves. A filmmaker on board queued up the experimental documentary she filmed during a troubled sailing voyage to Antarctica (her ship was struck by lightning; all advanced navigational instruments were damaged). What I saw of the film was good, though the timing of the screening seemed borderline perverse. I soon had to retreat to my cabin and to a horizontal position.

Off the Grid

There was a regional map posted in the stairwell, on which our route was marked in black marker. We’d spent the previous half of the trip traveling around islands. Land was never more than a few hours away. Until now. Now, we were literally off the grid, beyond the northernmost point on the map.

Map of the Spitsbergen Archipelago, our route in black

Every morning, upon waking, my roommate, ceramic artist Harriet Hellman, and I delighted in lifting our blackout window shades to see our new view. Some mornings, we saw glacier. Other mornings, mostly fog. The following morning, we were still traveling when we woke up, but we soon arrived at our most extraordinary location yet.

Being sick casts a shimmer of surreality on everything. And here was a scene that could make a healthy person feel like they were in fantasy land. Our ship was an icebreaker, meaning it had the capacity to break through pack ice, which it did throughout the day, making a crunching sound each time. There is less pack ice in the summer than in the winter, and less generally these days than there once was (thanks, climate change!).

I shot a time lapse video from the ship’s bridge which gives a sense of what we were moving through:

At a certain point, the captain decided to aim as far north as the 82nd parallel. We let out cheers from the bridge when we reached it and took photos of the coordinates and ourselves.

Pack ice, GPS coordinates, and me with photographer Siri Kaur and geographer Paribesh Pradhan

We asked the captain whether it would be possible to continue further north. It would, he said, but why? It would just be more of the same.

So many people gave their lives trying to reach these latitudes - and ones further north. Specifically the North Pole.

I now understand how people can become fixated on a goal like that more than I previously did. Last month, I had exactly zero feelings about the prospect of reaching any specific latitude. But once on board, once we were approaching the 82nd, the energy and excitement proved contagious. On my flight from Longyearbyen to Oslo yesterday, the woman sitting next to me asked how far north I’d been, sharing that she’d reached the 80th parallel. “The 82nd,” I said.

“Oh. Well. Did you see all the animals?”

She seemed pleased to learn that I had not seen any arctic foxes. She saw two.

Though I downloaded about 15 books in advance of the journey, I read exactly one book while on board the ship: The Expedition by Bea Uusma, an investigation of the fascinating, deranged, and doomed Andrée expedition of 1897, in which three Swedes attempted to fly over the North Pole in a 100-foot tall helium balloon.

The project was funded by Alfred Nobel as well as the king of Sweden and the plan was absurd. These guys expected to reach the pole in under 40 hours of flying and then to continue on to Russia or maybe Canada or Alaska, depending on which way the wind blew, because remember: this was a balloon. At that point, they planned to land and be celebrated for their achievement of being the first people to view the North Pole. They were so confident they packed the balloon’s basket with champagne and dress clothes to wear for the newspaper photos.

The balloon was constructed of silk sewn together by French seamstresses. It had heavy drag ropes that were supposed to be used to help steer, but they got tangled and fell right away. Immediately upon takeoff, something made a crashing or exploding sound. The last words Andrée was heard to utter were “What was that?” The balloon struggled to stay in the air, banging against the ground and forcing the men to dump hundreds of pounds of sandbags. Then it rose too high. They managed to stay in the air for two days - which seems downright impressive, given everything - at which point they crash landed and were forced to abandon the balloon. They loaded up sledges with provisions and set out for a planned backup supply depot. But due to wind and shifting ice and maybe misreading their maps, they couldn’t get there. They finally made it to an island called Kvitøya, in the northeast of the archipelago. It should have been possible for them to survive the winter there. They had enough provisions and ammunitions. But all three men died. Their bodies and belongings weren’t discovered until 1930. The cause of their deaths was a mystery many tried to solve. Bea Uusma grew obsessed with the case and spent 15 years trying to get to the bottom of it. If all this sounds interesting to you, I’d recommend her book.

S. A. Andrée and Knut Frænkel and their downed ballooned, photographed by Nils Strindberg. This film was among the possessions discovered in 1930.

As we traveled north and then back south through the pack ice, I couldn’t help thinking about the irrationality and ego involved in human ambition. Each of us have our own special flavor. The 97 artists on board the residency came for different reasons and with different goals, some more specific than others.

One of the stated goals of the residency is to foster collaborative projects.

At the beginning of the trip, an artist I’ll call Mirror Man (or MM) made an announcement and call for volunteers to help him with his project, which he explained in brief at an all-boat meeting. He wanted to use mirrors to direct sunlight onto icebergs/pieces of ice and record the optical effects on the ice as it reflected the sun’s rays.

To achieve his goal, he needed group participation, and he wrote about it in the online forum prior to departure. He brought over a dozen large circular mirrors to the Arctic, packed in custom-made circular bags.It seemed like the kind of endeavor the expedition was designed to facilitate, and he presented his call for volunteers as a chance to take part in a fun collaborative project. He needed not just volunteers to hold the mirrors but a very specific set of conditions: direct sun and proximity to ice. Direct sun was a rarity - it was often blocked by clouds or fog - and often when it emerged, we weren’t near icebergs or floating ice. When MM requested volunteer assistance, he asked for a core group that wouldn’t mind being woken up in the middle of the night if that was when sunlight appeared, as well as an extra group of daytime helpers. A number of artists signed up for both categories.

Over halfway through the trip, the conditions were finally right. The crew used a crane to haul a several hundred pound chunk of ice up from the ocean to the top deck. Dozens gathered to hold mirrors and more came to watch as MM directed the mirror-holders. He filmed the ice with his camera on a tripod. A bunch of us took videos and photos of the artists with the mirrors. It all felt fun and playful. MM was happy with the resulting footage. All seemed well.

Days later, at an evening meeting, MM came up to discuss, as he put it, the three C’s: content, consent, and copyright. 

He had spoken to an art lawyer prior to the trip to make sure he knew how he was protected and how he should assert his claims. He was concerned about the rest of us violating his copyright by sharing photos or videos of his art piece.

He informed us that it is illegal under Norwegian law to record or publish someone else’s content without their consent. That to, for example, post an Instagram story of artists engaging in art-making without the explicitly obtained consent of said artists is a copyright violation potentially subject to prosecution. He likened us to being on a movie set, where people are required to sign waivers prohibiting them from recording or disseminating visual imagery.

He said that he had experienced people stealing his work before, as had other people on board. Cited an example of someone taking a photo of another artist engaged in art making and claiming photo copyright.

He then raised his hand and announced that he did not consent to images of him or his work continuing on in any form. When the project was taking place, MM had seen people taking photos and videos. He had made no protest then. He had in fact asked on the forum for a photographer and a videographer who would be willing to record the event.

A couple artists raised hands to make comments in support. Another artist raised a hand to clarify that actually, simply possessing a snapshot or video of someone on your phone is not illegal.

Needless to say: all of our phones and memory cards were filled with images of the other artists on board. It was basically impossible to avoid. We were a group of 97, after all. It was hard to capture a clean, people-free shot of any of the places we visited. It was also, as many commented afterward, sort of disingenuous to do so. The fact that we were here in such a big group - and having a non-negligible human impact on the spaces we visited while purporting to make art in some way touching on the importance of preserving said spaces - was in fact a very important aspect of the endeavor, and one worth both capturing and addressing.

MM’s speech became a main topic of conversation for the rest of the day and days that followed.

Many people quibbled with the tone. The assumption of malicious intent. As one photographer pointed out, the entire thing might have been boiled down to - and articulated as - “don’t be a dick.”

Do unto others as you wish to have done unto you, etc. After all: everyone there was theoretically a professional artist. A number of artists on board were also professors. As multiple people pointed out, it is legal to take a person’s photo in a public space. See, for example, the entire genre of street photography.

MM’s speech didn’t induce suspicion among the artists on board about who might intend to violate whose copyright. Instead, it catalyzed near-instant camaraderie even among artists who had rarely interacted previously.

The question of what is or is not appropriate to depict and publish is a perennial one, but it is largely one involving personal morality, not legality.

The writers on board seemed uniformly mystified. I have thought at great length about the morality of writing about other people - as have most writers I know. Every writer has their own personal code of conduct. Different comfort levels, different boundaries. Unless your writing is libelous or defamatory, legally, anything goes.

There’s little question about who has copyright over a person’s writing. It’s the writer. I regularly give writer friends feedback and editorial notes on their work. I have helped solve plot problems, line edited, offered title ideas. You hope for a thank you in the book’s acknowledgments, maybe, but that’s it.

I’m thrilled for people to post and share my writing online. I want to be credited, of course. But I’d never expect to be asked for consent.

MM was particularly concerned with someone leaking his work before he has a chance to show it himself. As he clarified to me in a subsequent conversation, today’s smartphones have such good cameras that it’s entirely possible that someone could capture a recording of his work that looks equivalently or even more professional than the video he recorded on his camera. And if they were to post it on their Instagram account, it would be akin to plagiarism, he explained to me.

This was the following morning, before breakfast.

I had stumbled up to the bar with my laptop and was trying to write a Substack newsletter - and struggling mightily due to COVID brain fog and feeling generally rough. I had written variations of the same sentences about pack ice multiple times. MM came to sit down across from me. He told me that this was the first morning I hadn’t wished him a good morning and asked if I was angry with him.

I said no, that I was trying to work. But this seemed too reductive and not quite accurate. My feelings towards him had certainly changed since the previous day. I wasn’t angry with him, but I certainly felt less warmly, and had much less of a sense of mutual understanding between us. I mentioned some things about being put off by the tone and content of his speech the previous day, though I also clarified that I didn’t feel implicated by the discussion because as a writer, anything is legally fair game.

MM suggested that perhaps I didn’t understand the issue because I’m not a visual artist.

I’m not a visual artist, that is true. Though I am writing a novel about one - and one of the storylines in said novel concerns the morality of representing others in one’s work.

And I do know a fair bit about film and TV sets, so I pointed out that the Arctic tundra is quite different than a privately owned studio lot. MM asserted that the boat was private property, though. And ok, sure, yes. Though not his personal property.

The spirit of it all felt aggressive, though, I said, as opposed to an assumption of best intentions. MM said he’d been stung before, and if anyone found it aggressive, well, that wasn’t his problem.

He remained mystified by my altered demeanor towards him. He took things a step further by telling me that I had spent the last twelve days trying to hook up with him.

This was false. Had I been sometimes generally flirtatious? Yes, I’ll allow that. But I behaved no differently with him than I had with other new friends on the ship. 

Also, I had covid. And it was a covid that had grown increasingly rough, snotty and downright unsexy. I was on day 6 or 7 of symptoms at that point. The idea that I might hook up with anyone while in that state was almost funny.

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One of my last trips off the ship before covid struck was the freezing rainy Zodiac ride where I read my novel’s prologue, as I wrote about in a previous newsletter. The guide who drove the Zodiac that morning subsequently told me he wanted to hear more of my “erotic literature.”

The passage I’d read used the word fuck and made two mentions of cunnilingus.

“I write literary fiction,” I told the guide.

“Sure,” the guide said, smiling.

When I told Mirror Man about the conversation with the guide, he encouraged me to go for it. No thanks, I said. Not who I’d choose on the ship.

Mirror Man proceeded to tell me he suspected I was hunting for something notoriously hard to get: him. His phrasing. I didn’t immediately deny. I let him keep talking. I asked follow up questions.

This is the difference between writers and photographers, a photographer commented later. She would have cut off the conversation. I milked it for detail. I wanted to know more when he told me that he’d been with a Taurus for 15 years and, as an Aries himself, had learned not to do that again. 

In our morning conversation, MM asked if my repeatedly reminding him that as a writer I don’t need a subject’s consent was a threat. Threat seems like not quite the right word. But I guess I did intend it as a kind of warning.

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Deb Olin Unferth, Lucy Corin, and I spent several days trying to organize a literary reading for the writers on board. The visual artists had been doing nightly presentations of their work, and we were hoping for an opportunity to allow the writers to do something similar. This proved unexpectedly challenging. We received scheduling resistance from the expedition leader, who for no deducible reason except perhaps that it hadn’t been her idea refused to offer us a day and time and finally allowed us a 9:17am “breakfast reading”.

I read a condensed version of the passage I’d read on the Zodiac. I saw a few phones recording in the audience. Would I want the recording of my unpublished work shared online? Not particularly - not in such an early form - but I also wouldn’t be particularly troubled if I learned that somebody shared some part of it on Instagram. I did read it out loud, after all. It’s not like someone leaking my whole novel draft. 

I suppose for MM, someone leaking a video of the ice piece feels to him like the equivalent of leaking a manuscript. But posting a photo of artists holding up mirrors? That seems different.

Then again, what do I know?

I’m just a writer.

The trip is now over, and I have hardly begun to process it. I anticipated having so much time on board for thinking but I had almost none. I made a number of friends I know I’ll keep, and I am grateful for that, as well as the extraordinary things I had the privilege of seeing. I wish I hadn’t had COVID, of course. But so it goes. We had a very extended series of goodbyes, including dinner at Longyearbyen’s surprisingly solid Mexican restaurant, Tio Monchos.

Afterward, a large group migrated to a nearby bar. Someone stood up to take a group photo. Instead of cheese, on the count of three, we called out, “Consent!”