Project by Ellie Madsen
This narrative atlas documents the physical interventions by the U.S. in Greenland from the 20th century to the present. It focuses on specific sites including military bases, mines, and research centers. These sites are communicated with archival maps, photos, satellite images, documents, quotes, investigations, diagrams, plans, and more. How are U.S. military interventions in Greenland distributed spatially and temporally? What lingering effects of the Cold War physically remain in Greenland? How can cartography be employed to represent the contradictions and tensions between the ice (vast, dynamic, geological time scale) and imposing architectures (discrete, static, human time scale)? How can this history of objects and places provide a new lens through which we can understand the U.S.’s continued interest in Greenland as a strategic site of military opportunity and resource extraction? How can archival materials be used to tell a narrative whose data is obfuscated (spatially displaced, classified, abandoned, buried under the ice)?
