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🦋 More stuff from Greenland

First, just got to say this image (of houses in Uummannaq, shot by Nathan Gallagher) is one of the prettiest things I've seen all week. Uummannaq is the last human settlement they will see on their voyage north, as Robyn says it is "the last place we will visit on this trip that has an ATM."

Francesca Galeazzi did a performance piece yesterday, walking out onto the snow field of the Jakobshavns fjord with a cylinder of 6kg carbon dioxide and releasing it into the unspoiled beauty of the wilderness.

My first reaction to this is visceral disgust -- sort of, "You find a spot that's untouched and you 'pollute it' just to show that you can? What's the point, just to show yourself as a human and an asshole?" But her follow-up post from this morning makes what seems to me like a really good point:

Some of my fellow voyagers were upset about my piece because they could visualise that black â??nastyâ?? cylinder full of CO₂ in a way that they couldnâ??t, if I told them that every time they drive their car for 30 miles they emit the same amount of carbon dioxide. So I wonder if the societal shift that I was advocating with my performance could be achieved if we would find a more direct way to visualise the Carbon impact of the resources we use!

This contextualizes the performance piece in a really useful way -- I think my original reaction is kind of the response she is looking for, and that she's trying to extend that visceral disgust to everyday polluting activities.

posted morning of Friday, October third, 2008
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