“Albedo Prospect (2012)” by Ed Osborn

Exhibiting Artist(s):

• Ed Osborn

The essential ‘otherness’ of frozen landscapes permeates this multi-channel video work. Based in part on writer Arthur Koestler’s press reports filed from the 1931 airship flight to the high Arctic, it explores “the polar imaginary” through material gathered on the sea and in remote locations around the Svalbard archipelago. No recordings survive of Koestler’s radio transmissions from this journey, noted for his vivid and entrancing account of what is essentially a largely invariant terrain of ice and snow; however, his newspaper dispatches are part of the public record. The polar territories have now been extensively explored and mapped, and are far better understood than they were in Koestler’s time, yet their qualities of spatial and geographic disorientation remain as essential characteristics. This work re-imagines the spaces of these reports, presenting them in a contemplative framework to allow “a long view of long views”.