Andra Pop-Jurj

The notion of monsters and ghosts has served as a framework to think with, rather than a binary definition. Going against formal classification systems, I ask how we might learn to live collectively within dynamic landscapes. The monsters refer to symbiotic relationships between and within species. The ghosts are landscapes haunted by the violence of modernity. They show us how living landscapes are archives of human tracks and traces. Ghosts become tangible through the melting of the sea ice, of the permafrost, and the destabilization of the ground that is already calling for deindustrialization in some parts of the Arctic. Together, they reveal a symbiosis between the local and the global. 

The aesthetic of the landscape draws on the way scientists conceive of some of these environmental phenomena - often in a language of admiration and fascination. This is also in line with the purpose of an epic environment, being one that absorbs and envelops the player in a sense of awe and wonder. These principles lie at the basis of an immersive and engaging experience.

Five different, yet often overlapping, time segments make up the narrative, which is experienced in non-linear way. The transcalar and transtemporal worldmaking hopes to challenge and refine existing modes of engagement with the Anthropocene. It further reveals that the scales that allow for a better understanding of this are emergent, rather than eternal and they do not obey fixed ontologies. The game engine is both a testing and training ground, in which scales are effective way above and below our usual levels of perception and sometimes even on the border of life itself.

Permafrost thaw will also affect biological dynamics in a wide range of processes; some of which are still poorly understood. As soils become available for microbial degradation, methane and pollutants such as mercury are being transported across boundaries. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions due to an accelerated microbial turnover, permafrost thaw will also facilitate the release of pathogenic DNA viruses stored frozen in ice. In the tundra of the Yamal peninsula, close to the world's largest reserve of natural gas, enormous wounds have emerged in the vast permafrost landscape over the last decade. Unexpected geochemical processes culminate in extremely high underground gas pressure over the course of a few years. After which, one day, suddenly and violently, craters explode into being. Deep deposits of methane and carbon dioxide find their way up into the atmosphere, often together with flames and smoke. Over a year or two, they fill with water.

This underground world is home to frozen microbes, both fungi and bacteria and viruses. A process, a condition, and space tied to planetary exchanges of energy and matter, as conceived of by Russian systems thinkers, but not quite permanent frost or permafrost - for freezing is not permanent under the present conditions on the earth, known to us. The permafrost has been cored - its interiors have been sampled, ancient histories revealed but much of its contents remain a mystery. What lies buried deep within it is not only a past - flash-frozen in fragments of bone and lichen, mammoth ivory and cryogenically preserved bodies - but also a future. It is a silo of sorts, a granary of diamonds and ore and oil and bone, a bank of wonder and life.

Operating across microscopic, domestic, national and transnational scales - the project situates itself in a near-future speculation. Mindful of ecological contingencies, elements of reality are intertwined with both extrapolation and uncertainty in a worldbuilding exercise. Seeking to uncover relations, dynamics, and forms of negotiation between systems and different agents, the narrative is grounded in a number of encounters - relationships disrupted or forged in the last few decades. In the gamespace, these contact zones can be exaggerated to reveal often unexpected relations between agents across species, scales, and timeframes. Rather than taking a position that attempts a complete (and completely utopian) abandonment of anthropomorphic thinking, the project looks to adopt more encompassing and critical forms of thinking beyond the human.

At the scale of these infrastructures humans do not register; appearing just a discoloration, a dead pixel thoroughly embedded in the grain of technology and indistinguishable from the systems that surround us. The Carbon Liberation Front seeks out all of past life that took the form of fossilized carbon, unearths it, and burns it to release its energy. Fossil fuels that have taken millions of years to make are being consumed in the course of only a few hundred. After all, the Anthropocene runs on carbon. 

As permafrost across more than half of Russia thaws, entire cities are on the brink of deindustrialization and relocation. Critical oil and gas infrastructure is in danger of spills and malfunctioning as the ground destabilizes, while new resources are becoming accessible. Elsewhere, the migration routes of wild reindeer have shifted, while unfamiliar insects and plants inhabit the woods.