Artists and writers have an important role to play and it is vital that they are fully engaged in these (climate) issues

Shlomo’s Babelbox Podcast - Arctic Special

Listen to Shlomo’s new Podcast, recording on his Arctic expedition. It features exclusive new material from Martha Wainwright, music from Feist, Jarvis Cocker and interviews with Marcus Brigstocke, Vanessa Carlton and Laurie Anderson.

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The Word magazine cover feature

The Word magazine cover feature

Don’t miss this The Word magazine this month (Issue 70, December 2008) as Cape Farewell make the cover feature with “Jarvis in the Arctic - Ten musicians, one vanishing ice cap” by Michèle Noach.
Visit the The Word online at www.wordmagazine.co.uk ›

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Arctic feature on Tweakerzine

Read Arctic Hannah Bird’s feature on the Disko Bay expedition in this month’s online magazine Tweakerzine.
www.tweakerzine.com/#arcticdisko ›

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Jarvis on BBC Radio 6

Sunday 26 October 2008, 5.30-7.30pm, BBC Radio 6
Jarvis Cocker keeps Stephen Merchant’s seat warm as he plays a shed load of great ‘mood swing’ tracks, plus Martha Wainwright performs live and David Buckland talks about Cape Farewell and the 2008 Disko Bay Expedition.

Listen to the show on the BBC iPlayer until Sunday 2 Nov
If you missed it on Sunday you’ve still got a week left to listen to the programme on the BBC iPlayer. Follow the link to hear Jarvis, Martha and David until Sunday 2 November.
Listen to the show on BBC iPlayer ›

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KT Tunstall and David Buckland

David Buckland and KT Tunstall discuss personal responses to the voyage, being in an Arctic environment, new songs, shifting practice and engaging with climate change as an artist.

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My expedition summary

10 days of constant curiosity both from the scientists and artists have run me/us ragged. Western Greenland/Arctic has worked its magic, the debate has been constant and fledgling art processes have engaged and been executed, all of which have been well diarised in the blogs for this expedition.

Intellectual climate input was achieved with a series of daily talks: two given by the onboard scientists, three by the two Inuit guides and Dr Ko de Korte, Sunand Prasad tackled contraction and convergence, Quentin Cooper gave a great talk on ‘Cape Farewell’, Joe Smith on Carbon Trading and market response, Ryuichi Sakamoto, KT Tunstall, Chris Wainwright and Francesca Galeazzi led a lively discussion on the artists response/creativity and a final talk led by Marcus Brigstocke and Joe Smith addressed just how important it is to feel ‘up’ and empowered by things climate rather than crawl into a hole of despair. These were focussed discussions but all this input led to an endless dialogue in small breakout sessions where we all talked one on one over dinner and wine (and vodka). Lively!
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KT Tunstall’s Arctic Diary

KT Tunstall onboard an expedition studying the effects of global warming

Friday, September 26th
Plane landing at Kangerlussuaq
We could see the east coast of Greenland, indifferent, majestic, and there they were - icebergs from above!! Aaaarrr!! We were suddenly all toddlers, looking down on the little minty sailboats being shoved out of the nest of the shore, forced to take off on voyages from which they would never return. Ever diminishing, ever more alone. Gliding off into the vastness.

5 hours sailing down the gargantuan straight of Sondre Stromfjord, the light starts to get soaked up by the time. Like a waking dream. Milky green sea that looks alive. A beautifully perfected valley scraped out of the landscape as our guide, singing us out of its mouth. The weirdness. The spook. That half-light that makes you feel like the whites of your eyes are glowing. A low-lying cloud that turns a scottish landscape into a science fiction set. The boat is full and buzzing like a hive. The Belgian-Danish bar and restaurant manager Jan (Yan? Xian?!) has the best and weirdest burr on his r’s I’ve ever heard. Want to teach him the Ragged Rascal Ran tongue twister.
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Jarvis Cocker on the voyage

Jarvis Cocker speaks about the voyage, scraps, fjords, climate change and what he’s experienced. “I’ll never forget it that’s for sure…”

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Sunny days

I’m going home in the morning. It’s been wonderful and exhilarating and beautiful but I’m ready to get back to my family now who are all of those things only much much louder.

The good news is that we’ve solved that whole pesky climate change fiasco. It turns out it was the sun. It’s heat from the sun that is causing global warming. The sunshine did it. It’s not surprising, I mean when you look at the sun you have admit it does look hot doesn’t it. In scientific terms what’s happened is that the sun has sent a lot of heat energy down to earth for many hundreds of thousands of years making what scientists refer to as ‘sunny days’ (forgive the jargon but it’s important to be accurate I think). Now plants and little creatures have absorbed these ‘sunny days’ and then, sadly but with some degree of inevitability, died with the ‘sunny day’, literally trapped within them, then they have sunk down into the earth in the form of ‘sunny day’ rich fossil fuels. These ‘sunny days’ have later been released as people have needed the ‘sunny day’ energy in the fuel in order to power all the stuff we like - hair dryers, Toyota Land Cruisers, Nintendo Wii’s, fridges, life support machines, jet boats, angle poise lamps, vibrators, DVD players, aeroplanes and whirlybirds, air-conditioning units to cool the effects of a ‘sunny day’, mobile phones, electric toothbrushes, motorised carving knifes, remote controlled cars, actual cars, car museums, Top Gear, cars and machines which can exactly replicate the browning effect of a ‘sunny day’.
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Our last day

Hannah Bird and the northern lights as we sail down Kangerlussuaq Fjord

You know that Apple Mac screen saver with the cosmic tracer thing swirling around? About 10 of us were stood on deck late night and looked up at the same time that it escaped out of someone’s laptop, gained gargantuan proportions and launched itself out of the sky above our heads in neon green; spinning, speeding, an incredible Catherine Wheel firework that made us all scream. I stayed out there for an hour and a half in minus ten, making myself laugh as my frozen face was about 5 seconds behind any words I tried to say. The best light show in the world.
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Northern Lights

Sunand Prasad and Northern Lights
Sunand Prasad and Northern Lights as we return along Kangerlussuaq Fjord (Big Fjord).

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Late Breaking Dispatch

Snapshots as of 10:35 pm (boat time)
In the open sea west of Greenland, 71 degrees latitude

In each town there are wooden houses painted Bahamas hot pink, primary blue, creamsicle orange, cherry red, canary yellow, fluorescent green… scattered across rock hills climbing up from the black sea. A local boy who, seeing all the cameras (there are people taking pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures of the ice, all being filmed by people taking film of the people taking pictures of people) took off his shoes on the beach and ran into a long thin creek reaching out the sea, breaking the thin film of ice with his bare feet. All of a sudden pretending not to see the cameras, kicking up water at his little brother, they ambled off down the beach. A little speaker around his neck playing tin-y distorted rap, staccato syllables whipped away by the wind coming off the meringue topped icebergs standing silent just off the shore. Black meat hanging on nails outside wooden shacks. Dogs are chained up on the rocky hills between the houses howling together from every edge of town like the call to prayer, and outnumber the people behind the coloured doors. We walk around like time travelers in our winter space suits while the locals skid by in runners and t-shirts.
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