T is for Treaty #AntarcticAlphabet

If the Treaty dies, the continent dies. When treaties are broken, people die. Treaties are agreements between those sovereign figments of our collective imagination, the nation-state. Itself an Enlightenment child, the ‘nation’ is our fundamental global organising principle. For the lucky majority, our nationality is the ground on which we … Continue reading

S is for sight: #antarcticalphabet

Sight, language, reference and memory are contingent, rely on our agreement to shared understandings. Does what I see differ from what you see? You may read that number-plate which is a blur to me, or I think this scarf is green when you insist it’s blue. Yet the interior experience … Continue reading

Q is for Question: a short love letter to the scientific method #antarcticalphabet

Query Island is a pimple in the ice at nearly 69° south, its existence a question till 1948. The Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (predecessor to BAS) named it recognising the difficulty of distinguishing it from the mass of the Peninsula. That’s science for you: honouring the question. The ‘scientific method’ has … Continue reading

Placemaking in Antarctica

There are stations and bases scattered across Antarctica, spread very thin and mostly around the edges. These are places, with form and function: . I’m avoiding the word settlement because the Treaty doesn’t allow permanent settlement (which is a good thing).     The term placemaking gets bandied around in my … Continue reading

Crab Attack: the ground-hunting rats of Antarctica

 The isolated, unique ecosystem of the New Zealand islands lay undisturbed for millennia with no ground-based predators. Flightless birds evolved, laying eggs in safe nests like this sweetly curled kiwi. Then humans turned up, along with rats: ground-based omnivores which have had a massive impact on all sorts of species. I was … Continue reading