Arktikaantarktika 0.9
www.arktikaantarktika.com
& Ieva Medioda  comissioned for Undercurrent, NYC 2020


The rise in water levels in New York is slow and irregular and therefore distorts the human perception of change. Areas that have never experienced flash floods will start to experience them, in part because global warming will also increase rainfall. Within a hundred years, lower Manhattan will be submerged by waters from the melted ice caps of the Arctic and Antarctic.
The text overlapping the drawing is created using the made up word—Arktikaantarktika, which becomes a repetitive sound and connects two Poles. The depiction of the experiencer's state of mind. To get closer to it we decide to take a walk on the drawing as if we were entering our state of mind. In this mindscape we wander inside the semi fictional topography. We imagine a fragment of Manhattan island somewhere in between two poles- Arctic and Antarctic and us, who worked and lived in NY city. And all are merging into one. As well, we merge as one with the glaciers if we believe that our world is an interconnected ecosystem on all levels- spiritual, mental and physical. If one could say to oneself- climatic change, the melting is happening in me, as well.

The virtual space was created by the environment artist Justyna Gorowska and the visual artist Ieva Medioda, who provided her painting to create a landscape texture. The outline of the space was based on a map of lower Manhattan. Arktikaantarktika 0.9 (beta version) was commissioned by Undercurrent Gallery (Brooklyn, New York) for the "10001" project.

More at Undercurrent website:
https://10001.undercurrent.nyc/

Beta version of the ARKTIKAANTARKTIKA project is already online:
www.arktikaantarktika.com

Justyna interviews Piotr Andryszczak from a Polish research station on King George Island, off the coast of Antarctica.