Rewilding Cultures conversations: Observations on Permafrost
The Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation 2025 is now open. It aims at initiating conversations on cultural exchange and offers grants for mobility beyond the current forms of support. Amongst the projects of 2024, the multidisciplinary artist Jean Danton Laffert went for a month to The Arctic Culture Lab in Ilulissat, Greenland, with the support of Radiona. Here is his photo report.
Report and photos by Jean Danton Laffert
Jean Danton Laffert Parraguez is a Chilean visual artist and docent, currently based in Netherlands. His work embraces the intersections of art, science and ecology through mixed media installations including light, space, electronic systems and living material. He explores a hybrid aesthetic between the digital and the organic as bio-interfaces, reflecting on bio-political topics. His creative method arises from the collaborative process, connecting diverse specialists such as scientists, artists and humanists. He’s been docent at universities and schools, as well as research artist in laboratory FABLAB, University of Chile.
In Greenland Jean Danton developed his project Observations on Permafrost, a visual narrative around permafrost in the Arctic and its thawing process as traces of the current anthropological crisis. With the base of media art, environmental big data, and a transdisiplinary collaboration with scientists and artists, he developed a field exploration plan, looking for a situated aesthetic experience and learnings about how a remote phenomenon as is the permafrost, evidences the interdependence in a global community that is our modern world.
What could remote communities teach us about adaptation to this problems? Can we find in these regions, alternative visions to the crisis of the Anthropocene?
Preparing for the expedition
I started this project in July 2023, in collaboration with Runa Magnusson, a permafrost scientist from Wageningen University. Initially, this project was born as a thesis research for the Master of Fine Arts – “Ecology Futures”, which I was pursuing at St. Joost School of Arts in the Netherlands. After a period of theoretical research and small experiments, in March 2024 I participated in the Ars Bioarctica Residency. That was my first field exploration in Finnish Lapland, and my first insights into permafrost and its ecological network: the ice, soil, mosses, lichens, reindeers and the weather. All of this defined my initial stage of exploration.
In August 2024 I finished the Master Ecology Futures with a prototype of an art installation. After this I prepared the Greenland residency in Arctic Culture Lab for October-November, with the support of Rewilding Cultures Mobility Grant.
“Observations on Permafrost” is a project related to a local field experience in the arctic. Normally, people from urban areas or big cities do not have access to this remote places, and sometimes they not connect with the arctic problems and their importance for all of us.
In this sense, capturing the life of local people, including Inuit communities, was an important point in the residency an the future creative results. Permafrost is very present in the common life of greenlandics, so their perception is key to integrate the human factor in my project.
The residence is located in Ilulissat, a small town on the west coast of Greenland. It is very close to the Kangia Glacier and surrounded by numerous Fjords, as well as settlements to the north and south of that area.
The settlements I visited frequently during my stay were Oqaatsut (north) and Ilimanaq (south). I arrived by boat. In the area around Ilulissat, I went on hikes and field explorations on the fjord coast and inland, as well as sailing through part of the sea area of the icefjord.
I collected soil samples and collect plant species in open fields and fjord coasts, where traces of landslides and tsunamis linked to the melting of permafrost are found.
Remote settlements
Located in remote areas of the west coast of Greenland, many of the settlements are only accessible by helicopter or boat.
On these trips we visited, together with the collaborating photographer and a guide, different locations in the villages, houses and areas that have been affected by previous landslides caused by permafrost. We talked to local people about this, as well as learning about their daily life and their personal view of climate change in Greenland.
Studying the permafrost soil effects on buildings
Beyond the general effects of landslides and tsunami across Greenland, there are certain buildings with particular significance to the society. One of them is the Ilulissat Historical Museum, part of the town’s history and a house that highlights the controversies of the issues of permafrost melting in the city; a time- less mirror of the human relationship with the land and climate.
During my residency, I gived special attention to this building. It shows a great unevenness in its constructive base, risking its collapse in future years. Thanks to the support of Andreas Hoffman, one of the directors of the museum, I was able to access the internal spaces of the building and check the exact degree of unevenness and deterioration of its structure, all due to the melting of the permafrost wich year by year is increasing.
Key sites exploration
The effects of permafrost thawing on the urban development of Ilulissat are significant. For some years now, government authorities have been working together with private companies to design a new sustainable, climate-resilient development plan in Greenland with a special focus on permafrost.
I visited the new Ilulissat airport. Since 2022, land transformation works are underway, removing the entire underground layer of permafrost to have a stable base for the new airport, as the current one has suffered serious unevenness and damage due to permafrost thawing in recent years. We made videos, photos and an interview with an engineer in charge of the project.
I also visited a site preparation project for a retirement home. In this work, part of the underground permafrost layer was removed with machine excavations at the red X marks. We spoke to the project manager, who explained the technical details as well as his impression as a citizen of the effects of climate change on everyday life in Ilulissat.
ILLU science & art
Illu is a centre that serves as a meeting place for the local community, where artists and scientists organise regu- lar activities open to the public. It was established by the University of Bergen (UiB), together with partners from the ClimateNarratives project, in collaboration with Avannaata Kommunia.
I was invited to participate in artistic events such as the presentation of “Wispers of the sea”, an interactive performance installation by Birgitte Bauer-Nilsen, a Danish choreographer. Here I established important links with artists and cultural agents from Greenland and Denmark.
Linkage with cultural centers
As part of the Arctic Culture Lab residency program I was invited to participate in activities at the Ice Fjord Center in Ilulissat. Here I meet Karl Sandgreen, the director of the center. Among other activities, thanks to Karl I engaged with local children through an art activity, I spoke with them and learned about their daily lives.
At the Historical Museum of Ilulissat I got to know more deeply the culture and history of Greenland and its people, their language, technology and their old relationship with the European pioneers.
At the Art Museum I had access to the state of contemporary art from both local and international artists. I connected with diffe- rent approaches on topics involving Green- land and its relationship with global tenden- cies.
Both institutions are linked to the Arctic Culture Lab residency, so I had direct access to its libraries, facilities and people.
Engagement in education
It was very important for me to explore the human aspect of the permafrost phenomenon in Greenland. So, on my own initiative, I carried out an activity in a school in Ilulissat to find out the children’s impressions on this topic.
I offered a one-day workshop to the Mathias Storch School and was very well received by the coordinators and teachers. After two weeks of coordination I held a conversation session with the students, about permafrost in their daily life. I encourage them to express this with basic art materials plus samples of lichens and mosses from the area that I collected on my field trips.
It was a beautiful and enriching opportunity for both the children and me. Their writings and artistic creations will serve as a reference for my future artistic project.
Future steps
With all this experience I plan to make a mix media installation for exhibitions in Europe in 2025 or 2026. I am currently working in the next steps for carry out this.The whole impact that I spect for this project is not only about art exhibitions, but also for education and talks. I think that I can contribute with this, to the global reflections about climate change. As Bruno Latour coins, “There is a esicion between nature and culture in the modern times”. This project looks also to capture, as much as possible, a non-western vision in contrast with the single scientific knowledge and our classical perspective of nature in western societies.
Apply until March 31st to the Rewilding Cultures Mobility Conversation open Call
Jean Danton Laffert was mentored by Radiona for this mobility grant