Researcher or University
Can this place support our question?
Question → places and infrastructure → relevant projects → feasibility form
Start with the placesAn Arctic field platform in Svalbard
RESEARCH BEYOND BORDERS
NOT
Not a university, not a tour operator, not unrestricted access
COORDINATES
78°N
TYPE
International interdisciplinary Arctic research platform
WHERE
Svalbard
BBResearch connects researchers, artists, institutions
and Arctic infrastructure through field-based work on Svalbard.
and Arctic infrastructure through field-based work on Svalbard.
ACTIVE NOW
Applications closed
SELECTION
Not yet. Field notes will be published during the residency
OUTPUTS
11 residents
COHORT
Svalbard, Norway
LOCATIONS
11-25 aug
DATES
Upcoming
STATUS
Arctic is a mirror
of Global Change
of Global Change
One residency is being prepared for the coming field season. Artists and writers are arriving with different ways of reading the same landscape. It has not started yet. Everything below describes the work as it is currently planned.
UPCOMING RESEARCH RESIDENCY
Meet the residents
The work first, the biography second. Each card states one central question, the planned inquiry and the intended methods.
What happens when the Arctic stops behaving like itself?
INTENDED METHODS
PLANNED INQUIRY
Site observation · field notes · interviews · long-form fiction drafting
A full-length climate-crisis eco-horror novel set in present-day Svalbard:
a polar bear guard, a snowmobile expedition and an environment that becomes harder to explain.
a polar bear guard, a snowmobile expedition and an environment that becomes harder to explain.
Alexander Lumans
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
How do you picture a place that is too large,
too old and too unstable to fit inside a frame?
too old and too unstable to fit inside a frame?
Photography · printmaking · painting · sculpture · glass · 3D printing · collage
Overlaying domestic patterns and familiar surfaces onto Arctic space, to test the gap between geological time and the human time in which we experience it.
Zelda Zinn
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
What are we not hearing?
Field recording · oral-history interviews · sound art · audio documentary
Listening to Barentsburg and Pyramiden — ice, water, machines, empty rooms, voices, wind and static — and adding to an archive of testimonies held outside official records.
PLANNED INQUIRY
Ricard Franch Hernández
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
What stories does the Arctic still need us to hear?
Observation · field notes · conversations · archival reading · photography
Continuing fiction and essay work on whaling histories, glaciers, bones and memory — and on the tension between wanting to witness a place and damaging it by entering.
Cynthia Reeves
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
UPCOMING
PLANNED INQUIRY
What connections do we still need to imagine?
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
Curation · listening · questioning · producing · cross-disciplinary facilitation
INTENDED METHODS
Guiding "Arctic as a Mirror" residents from first impressions to real projects — helping them develop ideas, notice connections and shape research into artistic outcomes. Supports the process, not controls it.
Anastasia Loginova
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
What does the Arctic sound like?
Exploring the Arctic through its vibrations, silences, industrial echoes and voices — asking what becomes visible when we begin by listening. Work sits at the intersection of sound, technology, science and social impact.
Martín Haro
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
If a site could speak, what would it say?
Walking · photography · moving image · sound · writing · participatory practice
Cold Archive — artistic research into memory, extraction, climate and the afterlife of post-industrial landscapes: empty buildings, old mining routes, water near coal, silence after machinery.
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
INTENDED METHODS
PLANNED INQUIRY
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
INTENDED METHODS
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
INTENDED METHODS
PLANNED INQUIRY
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
INTENDED METHODS
PLANNED INQUIRY
UPCOMING
CENTRAL RESEARCH QUESTION
Field recording · underwater acoustics · audio storytelling · citizen-generated
INTENDED METHODS
PLANNED INQUIRY
Kate Roberts
Supplied residency material — illustrated portrait. Documentary photograph required before launch.
PLACES AND CONDITIONS
One archipelago.
Different field conditions.
Fieldwork across Svalbard is shaped by place. Infrastructure, access, history and research conditions change from one location to another. Barentsburg and Pyramiden are two examples of how those differences influence the work.
78°04′N 14°13′E
Barentsburg
Inhabited and operating year-round
Barentsburg is a Russian coal-mining settlement on the west side of Grønfjorden, operated by the state trust Arcticugol. People live and work here all year: the mine, the power plant, the port, the kitchen, the school.
- Year-round accommodation and catering
- Heated indoor working space
- Harbour and boat access in the open-water season
78°39′N 16°20′E
Pyramiden
Mining ended in 1998; small caretaking presence, mainly seasonal
Pyramiden is what Barentsburg would be without people. Coal mining stopped in 1998 and the settlement was left largely as it stood: apartment blocks, a cultural centre, a canteen, a sports hall, machinery.
- Limited seasonal accommodation and catering
- Very limited heated indoor space
- No general workshop or laboratory facilities
HOW A PROJECT MOVES
Every enquiry runs through the same five stages. Most of the useful conversation happens in the second one.
Weather, permissions, safety, logistics and capacity apply to all of it. We would rather tell you in March that something is not possible in April.
01
Question
What are you actually trying to find out?
02
Feasibility
Can this place, this season and this infrastructure support it?
03
Fieldwork
Time on site, within weather, permission and safety limits.
04
Output
Data, text, images, sound, a report or an exhibition.
05
Next step
Follow-up, collaboration, a further season, or an honest stop.
Find your route
Four common routes. Yours may differ.
People find us in all sorts of ways — with a question, a project, an organisation, or simply curiosity. The four routes below are examples of where each of those might lead. Yours may look quite different, and that's wonderful — tell us about it, and we'll help you find your way in together.
Programme Lead
Can we run a field programme with a clear learning objective?
Objective → programme format → capacity and logistics → discussion
Compare programme formatsPartner or Network
What role could we hold in this work?
Current work → possible role → evidence of delivery → partnership contact
See partnersPublic and Media
What is happening right now?
What is happening now → field notes → project page → contact or follow
Read Field NotesPARTNERS
Built
together
together
The Arctic brings together different countries, disciplines and ways of seeing the world. BBResearch grows through collaboration with our academic, cultural and institutional partners, connecting Arctic research, education and international exchange.
Moving from isolated academic silos toward open, collaborative field
ecosystems.
ecosystems.
Beyond the silo
Akureyri, Iceland
Arctic Portal
Qingdao University
Qingdao, China
Busan, South Korea
Institute of International Maritime Affairs
Murmansk Arctic University
Murmansk, Russia
HSE University
Moscow, Russia
The Northern Forum
International NGO
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