It’s very hard to talk about the Arctic without sounding like a hippie tripping on drugs. The whole experience felt like all the strongest emotions you can think of (the good, the bad and the ugly), taking over every part of your being whilst rewiring your brain. Being immersed in the wild, with no sign of human activity for thousands of miles, takes you to a place beyond time and space - the present.
I visited the Arctic in the spring of 2022. I was there as part of a residency programme (www.thearcticcircle.org) that invited scientists, educators and artists to develop projects based on its unique landscape. I was selected to take part based on my on-going project ‘ ξόρκια / incantations’ in which I research into the traditions and rituals from past and present cultures from all over the world, the ancient wisdom they carry and the relationship between that knowledge and findings in modern day science. During my trip, I specifically focused on the non-linearity of time as experienced and described by the indigenous people of the Arctic, whilst simultaneously exploring the same concept through various theories of physics and philosophy.
Indigenous tribes from all over the world as well as those that live within the Arctic Circle communicate/ed their myths, traditions and beliefs orally. Their construct of language is/was based on the way they live/ed and on their relationship with their immediate environment. Indigenous languages are described as agglutinative or polysynthetic, where a single word can convey an entire sentence. Linguistics is a beast of jargon, so I will use an example by author and ecologist Robin Wall Kimmerer to explain the difference between English and Potawatomi, a Native American language stemming from the regions of lower Michigan. In this extract Kimmerer talks about the animacy of her language and how the grammar is structured in such a way that it does not objectify locations, nature or animals.
“English is a noun based language, somehow appropriate to a culture so obsessed with things… Only 30 percent of English words are verbs but in Potawatomi that proportion is 70 percent… European languages often assign gender to nouns… Potawatomi does not divide the world this way, into masculine and feminine… Nouns and verbs both are classified not as male or female but as “animate” and “inanimate”. You “hear” a person with a completely different word than you “hear” an airplane… When “bay” is a noun, it is defined by humans, trapped between its shores, and contained by the word… Things I know with considerable scientific certainty to be nouns and adjectives are presented here as verbs… wiikegama, to be a bay, that verb releases the water from its bondage and lets it live. “ To be a bay” holds the wonder that for this moment, the living water has decided to shelter itself between these shores, conversing with the cedar roots and a flock of mergansers…. Who would have guessed that a grammar of animacy leads us to a whole new way of living in this world , as if other species were a sovereign people, as if the world were a democracy of species, not a tyranny of one.”
Robin Wall Kimmerer from her book 'Braiding Sweetgrass’
Language is so much more than the alphabet we use to speak and write in. Language stems from the sensory experiences we had with the ground, the trees, the oceans and the creatures that inhabit them. It evolved to encompass all our senses and the emotions we felt and what we understood from our surroundings. Indigenous people speak about a location to explain what they had learned, felt and experienced and the ties with their culture whereas nowadays Westerners refer to places to pinpoint where we have been, what we have seen and what we did.
In today’s society, sight is the first and main sense we use as a foundation for forming all kinds of relationships and opinions, including our bond with nature. Our habits are constantly evolving to suit this behaviour and as a consequence our language has transformed to fit in with our current needs. We use sight to tell stories, sell products and navigate through unknown territory. It’s flattened out our narration skills and engages a fraction of our senses. The “wow factor” is mainly aimed at our vision, dominating even over content. Trends appear as sharp bursts of visual information to fit our busy schedules. The “wow factor” is constantly transforming to accommodate what is marketed as fashionable. You can observe this phenomenon in movies, the news, in what we eat, on your social media feed and even in concerts where you’d think the main focus would be sound.
We live in a time that constrains nature and the present as we go about our everyday lives thinking about the future without worrying or focusing too much on factors like the weather or the fertility of the soil. We don’t need to be in tune with nature’s cycles, we don’t need to use all our senses to survive and to understand our immediate environment and this disassociates us from reality and our impact on the planet. Our body holds information that we have forgotten and discarded as insignificant and this detaches us from the present moment. The gradual and subtle changes in the seasons pass before us and only become evident when our electricity bills are sky rocketing and temperatures force us to change our daily routines.
I remember the boat anchoring in the midst of a fog. We were in a bay sheltered from the wind and the waves. Slowly the clouds began to part and Dahlbreen appeared before us. Everything just fell into proportion. Around 4000 years old, vast and grounding, the glacier constantly played with the light, shifting from grey to dark blue, to turquoise, green and cerulean. I felt so small yet so connected to its immensity and age. It held so much within itself; as though all the bonds between mother child that ever existed and that will ever exist on this earth, where held within the frozen water and were slowly being released into the ocean. From this moment I knew, that nothing ever ended, that everything was connected (told you - hippie tripping on drugs). My bodily senses became in-tune to their immediate environment and my thoughts and feelings rushed through me, healing any doubts or fears. Nothing mattered apart from being aware of the present because the present is all that there was and is. In every culture and religion shamans, priests, buddhists and yogis speak of oneness in various tongues. A harmonious relationship with everything in the universe, they say, is what makes us complete.
“For those of us who believe in physics, the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Albert Einstein
There is a vastness to time that transcends our common representation of it and that we all understand, when we surrender to our imagination, bodily experiences and emotions, in the present moment. Our concept of non-linear time becomes distorted when you fall in love, when you are scared, when deep feelings take over your body and this is exactly what happens when you absorb the extreme natural conditions of the Arctic landscape or of a bustling city, with all your body and soul.
“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal. For the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever.”
Alan W. Watts
With so many images saturating our everyday lives I chose to use sound instead of photographs to present the experience and the research made on the trip:
Listen to the Arctic soundscape I created as part of the interactive installation for this project, made from field recordings made on the trip ad various online resources.
♥ artemis evlogimenou
This article was presented as part of the installation I created based on my residency in the Arctic Circle. The residency and installation was fully funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture in Cyprus as part of the TRANSIT 2021 - 2025 programme.
#arctic #northpole #arcticcirle #glaciers #indigenousculture #potawotami #AlbertEinstein #AlanWatts #indigenousknowledge #physcis #nonlineartime #time #oneness #soundscapes #nature #linguistics #thoughtforms #RobinWallKimmerer #ecology #present #presentmoment #philosophy #science
Comments