|
HERE: A place-based polar image bridge Audiences were invited to contribute to this interactive digital exhibition at the 2025 Polar Educators International Conference in Boulder, Colorado, part of the Arctic Science Summit 2025 Co-curated by Julia Dooley Adam Fung Emily Artinian Carol Maurer March 22 and 23, 2025 Contributions installation / screening at Polar Educators International March 23, 2025 Emily Artinian Street Road, Participatory Art, and Citizen Science A Presentation at the Polar Educators International Conference and Arctic Science Summit 2025 |
Polar photography has tended to frame the Arctic and Antarctic: (1) as object over subject; (2) as monumental; (3) as otherworldly and unreachable; and (4) as terrain to conquer or a challenge to overcome. These tendencies contribute to a profound distancing – the polar regions indeed exist as an Ultima Thule in the minds of many of our planet’s inhabitants, or worse – for an extractive elite – as a blank-slate 'resource' awaiting 'development'.
Many are also unaware that for the more than four million people living in the Arctic, a large number of whom are Indigenous, these high latitude lands are known well and deeply as home. Against the backdrop of such mythical framings it becomes impossible to understand the poles of our planet as being part of integral, fluid sets of interlocking, interdependent ecosystems. Without this understanding we cannot easily place ourselves, our behaviours, and our beliefs in a changing planetary system. HERE: A place-based polar image bridge therefore offers a space in which to consider – through an aesthetic and kinaesthetic approach – the ways our own personal locations can be re-thought, re-framed, and re-imagined as having a direct relationship with Earth's dynamic systems, which are, in turn, interdependent with the polar regions. We invited conference attendees, Street Road's audiences, and anyone in the wider public – to submit polar-connected photographs from personal daily life for inclusion in the exhibition. By seeking out polar-linked imagery in the same spaces as your own local ecosystems, we encouraged contributors to bridge the space between an understanding of everyday place and to make direct affective connections to polar places. We believe that through accessible aesthetic acts such as this it is possible to see our daily actions in the context of global climate change, to better envision our own personal impact on the earth, and to see ourselves as part of a global ecosystem, interconnected across massive distances. By sourcing imagery from a broad spectrum of participants we aimed cast a wide net and so gather multiple perspectives, experiences, and understandings of the contemporary moment. Collected images are compiled together into a film, slowly fading from one to the next, suggesting human bridges between and across landscapes, both real and implied, and challenging colonialist ideologies to consider a deeper understanding of place-based knowledge. What truly is 'here'? HERE: a place based polar image bridge
This compilation of images submitted to Street Road was exhibited during the Polar Educators International conference the weekend of March 22-23, 2025, projected on the large screen in the main gathering space --
The Glenn Miller Ballroom (Room 210). To participateFirst, consider: what might you interpret as a polar-connected aspect or moment of your everyday life? Then: create a still image of this moment (which could be a place, or an occurrence, or perhaps people or other-than-humans engaged in some activity). You might use photography, drawings or collage — whatever means you feel best conveys the connection you are identifying. Send us one still image (remembering that all submissions will be collected into a landscape-oriented slideshow).
Curatorial team
Julia Dooley is a founding member of Polar Educators International. She is an artist with a BFA in Photographic Illustration from Rochester Institute of Technology and is a retired public school educator. Her practice currently is as head gardener of Meadowville Farm in Chester County, PA whose aim is to propagate native species and limit rainfall runoff into two local watersheds. Adam Fung is an Associate Professor of Art at Texas Christian University (TCU) in Fort Worth. He received his MFA from University of Notre Dame and his BFA from Western Washington University. He works primarily as a Painter and has a dynamic range of research interests that touch upon issues such as climate change, landscape, and hyperobjects. Emily Artinian is an artist and curator and is founder and director of Street Road Artists Space. She is currently developing a second site for Street Road in London, UK to open in 2026 as well as a London-based residency for artists and writers called The Love Shack. Carol Maurer is a longtime member of the Street Road collective and is a walking artist based in Delaware (USA). She is currently researching the walks undertaken by Edgar Allan Poe in Richmond, VA, Baltimore, MD, Philadelphia, PA, New York, NY, Boston, MA and London, England. Previously she has walked and created work from a 170 mile walk from her ancestral home in Dorchester County Maryland to Chester County PA, walking the landscape of those who were seeking freedom prior to the Civil War. ABOUT POLAR EDUCATORS INTERNATIONAL Polar Educators International is a global network of educators and researchers connecting polar research, education, and the global community. The Polar Educators International Conference 2025 is the sixth International Workshop for Polar Educators, closing the gap between polar science, indigenous knowledge and polar education. Street Road Artists Space, Participatory Art, and Citizen Science
A Presentation at the Polar Educators International Conference and Arctic Science Summit 2025
Emily Artinian Sunday March 23, 2024 1:30pm MST Glen Miller Ballroom in UMC - 210 (Main Workshop Room) One day ticket registration (in person or online) Along with artist Adam Fung and Julia Dooley of Polar Educators International, Emily Artinian and Carol Maurer of Street Road Artists Space were asked to co-curate HERE: A place-based polar image bridge. Artinian and Street Road, which she founded in 2011, have long been involved in facilitating and developing art happenings that can be understood as participatory artwork, citizen-based art, or, in more theoretical terms, relational aesthetics. Projects have involved dozens or even hundreds of participants and have been insistent on seeing audience members as co-creators. In a brief overview of selected Street Road works and also the PEI photography submissions that will be screening throughout the conference, Emily reflected upon these audience-focused branches of contemporary art, and will posited a connectedness to the phenomenon of citizen science. 
This project is organized in collaboration with
Polar Educators International |