Lena Geerts Danau

As the ice is melting, a new ocean is emerging. The first flag was planted in 2007 by Russia, an act that trans­formed the Arctic Ocean, a former terra incognita, into claimable territory. It didn’t have any legal con­sequences but memorized how European powers gained pos­session over terra nullius, demonstrates the colonial connotation of sovereignty and heated the tensions between the surrounding na­tion states of the ocean.

These promises of global warming transform the Arc­tic region into a site of intense geopolitical and in­frastructural intrigue with incompatible border claims made over the previously un­touchable landmasses. The immaterial nature of these claims currently constitutes a battleground for political and geographic conflicts. None of them is ratified yet, which allows us to re­think the current bioregion­al jurisdiction of the Arc­tic ocean and move towards a new form of networked geopolitics.

From 2013 onwards, the re­gion is subject to a fierce geopolitical game of trade and sovereignty over the oil-rich waters, discovered via the recent international in­terest and investigations. The Arctic tern returns ev­ery April from Antarctica to the Arctic, finding its way via the magnetic field. Their breeding grounds are cate­gorized by virtual boundary lines advocated for by NGO’s, who aim to transform the Arctic region into a wildlife sanctuary.

The new knowledge about the richness of resources posi­tioned underneath the arctic ocean floor fuelled the in­terest in the region. With­in the international waters, the border claims aren’t settled yet, but within each country’s exclusive econom­ic zone, the first regula­tions around places to ex­tract came to rise, at these places’ multinationals set­tled large oil infrastruc­tures and started drilling into the ground.

Traditionally, overfishing in the Arctic was not a ma­jor concern because of its ice cover, but the increas­ing melting asked for regu­lations, not only within the exclusive economic zones of each nation but also regard­ing the international wa­ters.

Nowadays, these high seas are open to anyone. In the absence of an agree­ment, fishing here is thus not illegal. Consequently, in the late 1980s, these wa­ters were crowded by fishing trawlers from Japan, China and elsewhere. They removed billions of tons of fish and placed the ecosystem in dan­ger. This overexploitation of the marine regions forced international organizations to map out and divide the dynamic landscape by politi­cal borders to limit the harm done to the ecosystem.

The region is getting ready for the busiest shipping route in human history, the new silk route of the North. This boat is one element of this new geographical network, a network in which communication happens via infrastructure positioned anywhere, in the sea, sky, on the earth and even in space. It sees the environment via waves. It maps the empty ports and robot cities dotted along the coastline alongside the passing machines, operated by offices located thousands of kilometres to the South. It registers the political borders constructed by multiple state jurisdictions, which together form our continuous planetary network. Still, they don't listen to them.

Triggered by the promises of global warming, the Arctic is a site of intense geopolitical and infrastructural intrigue, with incompatible and interlocking border, claims rooted in colonial and cartographic history. 

During my research, I discovered that these claims are political constructs with a liminal condition, presented via the current cartographic imagination that renders the world as Cartesian space. This arrangement of space is based on the location of bidimensional border lines. Lines decided by political decisions rather than scientific ones, which is why, especially in time of climate crisis, they lack the capacity to function as a suitable instrument to design and govern our world, exactly because they do not account for the complexities of the region.

Alternative Arctic perception constitutes an alternative cartographic representation for the Arctic. A region in which the climate radically transforms the geographic area as well as the geopolitical governance. The game lets you move through several geozones, which are transcontinental regions that defy the prevailing cartographic logics. By including global aspects apart from different meanings and histories of several agents, these zones aim to construct an alternative representation that accounts for the dynamic complexities of the Arctic landscapes.Ultimately, this game functions as a testing ground for a new visual strategy to communicate the liminal condition of politically constructed borders within the Arctic region.