International Conference in Inari (Finland)

Organised by the members and collaborators of the Mediated Arctic Geographies project, this international conference responds to the recent global interest in the Arctic. How geography is mediated and imagined matters profoundly: there is a world of difference between the figuration of ice as a sublime backdrop in Jeff Orlowski’s climate change documentary Chasing Ice (2011) and the presentation of ice and snow as a life-sustaining sphere in Sheila Watt-Cloutier’s The Right to Be Cold (2015).

We invite reflections on the role of art and the imagination in shaping, transforming, and contesting ideas about geography, and on the social, political, and environmental consequences of these mediations.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Jen Rose Smith (Assistant Professor of Geography and American Indian Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Liisa Holmberg (Film Commissioner, International Sámi Film Institute)