Arctic Ice Chess

2021, acrylic, toy soldiers, ice, performative videos, live games and conversational curation

Image above by Niels Heilberg.

Game 1 was facilitated by SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen and curated by Malou Solfjeld. Game 2 was facilitated by SixtyEight Art Institute Copenhagen and the Danish School of Education at Aarhus University, and curated by Malou Solfjeld and Malou Juelskjær. Video documentation of the games can be found at the bottom of this page.

Arctic Ice Chess examines the Arctic crisis and inspires viewers and participants to reflect on the situation up north. A map of the Arctic with its Indigenous peoples is printed on a chessboard with pieces cast out of ice. Inside the pieces are toy soldiers and that represent the players in the emerging ‘battle’ of the Arctic — the political and industrial figures that have big stakes in oil and shipping that stand to gain from melting ice and the emerging maritime routes as a result, and the pawns that represent the countries that will be affected by sea level rise and that are sacrificed in order to achieve these goals.

The first game was played by Jon Rahbek-Clemmensen, lecturer at the Institute for Strategy at the Danish Ministry of Defence Academy; versus the environmental activist and candidate for mayor, Gorm Gunnarsen. The second game was played by Jonas Andreas Lysgaard, Associate Professor at University of Århus, and Keith Brander, lead author for the fisheries and marine ecosystem sections of the fourth IPCC report, for which he and his team were awarded a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.