Video Installation

This work takes as a starting point the appearance of a white humpback whale off the coast of the Arctic archipelago, Svalbard, in 2012. A fractured narrative is constructed across two screens intertwining and juxtaposing both found and originally created footage. The found footage consists of dozens of digitally recorded albino appearances of animals from all over the world, distorted visually to the edge of abstraction. The originally filmed footage shows different parts of the coastline of Svalbard, facing the Arctic Ocean. Both visual positions oppose the unseen and the recorded, the absent and the digitally present. Using this imagery in combination with subtitles and sound, Frontier explores albinism as a genetic phenomenon and an attraction often resulting in abuse and ritual persecution. The subtitles originate from three sources: testimonies from Tanzanian and Malawian albinos, scientific studies into the relationship between radiation from Chernobyl and the increase in albinism in birds and the original dialogues in the background of the found footage from the internet.