S3E8: (After) Coal 1
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Host: Lutz Koepnick
For more than a century, coal mining shaped everyday life on Svalbard, one of the world’s northernmost inhabited places. Now that era is coming to an end as the Norwegian government decided to shut down the last mine. Last summer, host Lutz Koepnick had the opportunity to travel to Svalbard with filmmaker Jonathan Rattner and visual artist Jana Harper as part of a research project on art, resilience, and adaptation in the Polar North. Lutz watched the artists at work, talked with them about their practices, and spoke with other artists, curators, researchers, and residents about what role art might play in imagining life after coal. In this first of three episodes about the Svalbard experience, filmmaker Jonathan Rattner reflects on what it means to film in the Arctic without reproducing the extractive gaze that has so often shaped its representation. We also hear from people who know Svalbard intimately about how a century of coal mining—and the accelerating effects of climate change—continue to shape life on an archipelago undergoing profound transformation.
For more about filmmaker Jonathan Rattner: https://www.jonathanrattner.com/
For more about visual artist Jana Harper: https://janaharper.com/
For more about the research and publications of social anthropologist Zdenka Sokolíčková: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Zdenka-Sokolickova
Additional materials quoted in this episode:
“The Svalbard Treaty Explained: Geopolitics in the Arctic”(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8drp0sSYWiQ)
“The Longyear Mansion” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHBGq5eOmDY)
“Hurtigruten TV Advert” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4szBnvCuUVc)
“What you need to know about coal” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bi7sAYogeSw)
“Tidslag Live Event Longyearbyen.” Composer: Aggie Frost. Performed by Aggie Frost, Kristin Wensell Ellingsen and Kyrre Heldal Karlsen at Taubanesentralen in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, October 2024. Recorded by Tom Warner. Edited by Carl Christian Lein Størmer.
Coal Miner’s Daughter (Single Version) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoKThsOCjuU)
King Coal Official Trailer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RilYEH6BsIw)
This episode was made possible with the generous support from the Program in Communication and Science and Technology (CSET) and the Curb Center
for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, both at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN.