The final Artica Writings 2023 essay is out now: Recipes for disaster by Nikhil Vettukattil

A simulated image produced with a machine learning neural network. Based on thousands of images related to key words such as "nordic food" "food photography", "nutrition", "wellness", "ecology" and "sustainable" this synthetic image suggests some of the dominant aesthetics and visual language in contemporary culture today and their limitations.  

We are very pleased to share the final essay of Artica Writings 2023: Recipes for disaster written by Nikhil Vettukattil and translated to Norwegian by Lisa Bakk Bøen.

“All my assumptions about Svalbard fell apart before I had even got off the plane. There are on average two flights a day from Oslo to Longyearbyen, which always make a stop in Tromsø, northern Norway. I knew Longyearbyen had a population of just under 2400, and I naively assumed the flights were operating out of some national necessity, seeing as the island of Svalbard is 400 miles north of the nearest Norwegian shore. When I boarded the flight on the 15th of August it was almost fully booked. I had been to Tromsø a few times before and was familiar with the city as an international hub of the high north, what could honestly be called a ‘melting pot’ of Norwegians, Sami, Russians and eastern Europeans, Asians, and North Americans, tourists and workers alike. When we landed there I kept my headphones on, waiting as the American tourists disembarked the plane, perhaps in pursuit of northern lights, or saunas under the Nordic sun. Finally it was just me and what could have been a teenager or student a few rows ahead, also lost in music.”

Read the full essay, available in English and Norwegian here.