The People That Is Missing

Part of the Artica Listens 2019 programme by Cristina Lucas, co-curated with Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).

For Artica Listens 2019, Cristina Lucas took the nearly one-hundred-year-old Svalbard Treaty as a point of departure. The treaty today stands as a singular document of international collaboration. Nearly one hundred years after its signing, the treaty remains a functioning agreement among 44 nations that, while recognising Norwegian sovereignty over the Archipelago, proposes a formulation with utopian ideals of an international commons rarely seen in global geopolitics.

During her residency in Svalbard Lucas made a film ‘The People That Is Missing’ which debuted in Longyearbyen on November 30th as part of the Artica Listens 2019 programme.

The film sets out to enliven some of the most urgent questions of our time, an to do so from one of the most challenging sites in the world, where climate change is more evident and the tensions for the distribution of its resources will define the near future. ‘‘The video illustrates a poem composed by quotations of many influential, and often contradictory, thinkers ranging from Alexander von Humboldt to James Lovelock, Donald Trump and Bruno Latour, among others. The title ‘The People That Is Missing’ is an original quotation by the visionary Swiss artist of the early part of the 20th century Paul Klee. This concept, also underlined by Deleuze and Guattari, affirmed that the task of art is to create “the people that is missing, a future yet-to-be collectivity that has a genuine cohesiveness and functionality”—in other words, to catalyse the type of community that is yet to exist, with a sincere integrated force and collective purpose toward a sustainable existence.’’

More information on the rest of the Artica Listens 2019 programme can be found here.