Stentor Danielson (5:42)

All right, and so you've already started to kind of partly answer the next question I have, which is to kind of define what Antarcticness means and what makes Antarctica special as a place. So could you say a little more about that? You know, your title word here, Antarcticness.

Elon Kelman (6:02)

When we're trying to understand Typify, explain, express a location. Sometimes language fails us, but sometimes visualizations also fail us. Bringing them together helps to provide a much more complete picture. And it's not just about the Antarctic or Antarctic or Antarctica. It's something more which embodies, which encapsulates the people who've been there, the people who haven't been there, their thoughts, their imaginaries, their images, how they might see it with relation to them, or perhaps not at all. So that's where the suffix nis comes, in order to try and develop a word which, at least in English, helps to move forward, helps to explain, helps to try and understand. It also left it wide open. So when I put out the call for chapter proposals, I said, I'm interested in anything. It absolutely has to be academic. We do want to present science for the world. And what I have tried to do in my scientific career is to ensure that the science which I produce, the scientific process I go through, always serves society, always has meaning for people, is always trying to constructively improve. So Antarcticness. The book also had to have that element. And there is a lot of very cutting edge, fascinating, absolutely brilliant science running a range of disciplines from volcanology through to tourism research. But we cannot stop with the research process. People understand, explain, imagine, work things through in many different formats. Which is why I said, whatever way you want to express yourself, let me know. As long as it works in a book format. And we're working in English. So it really had to be in English. That meant that a chapter on paintings was contributed, a chapter with a photo essay was contributed, a couple of chapters which are midway between visual arts and photography were contributed, as well as two poems. And then there were some personal reflections. So highly original, highly innovative, really trying to explain what no one else before has known or experienced. But they're just not the full force of how academics write or how they reference. So it was really this combination, and to me, this combination brings forth Antarcticness. Not just a continent, not just a place, not just south of 60 degrees south, but really trying to say, this is what it means to humanity, this is what it means to the planet, and this is why it's important. And simply leaving open that way is what to me, creates the book. It was the ethos behind it. It was a point of trying to do it, to bring together, to seek diversity for connection. And that meant diversity of authors from around the world, of many different disciplines, many different backgrounds, many different ages, many different career stages, but in particular, many different formats. Definitely confined by being A book being linear, being English, but yet nonetheless being able to demonstrate so much creativity and innovation. In terms of saying we have this gigantic, almost inaccessible to many people location on our planet, how is it relevant? What does it mean?

Stentor Danielson (9:29)

Yeah, this is such a diverse book in terms of its contents, as you've said. You know, there's a photo essay, there's poetry, alongside more traditional academic articles. So how did you envision the audience for this book? Who are you hoping is going to be reading this book?

Elon Kelman (9:47)

Well, we are confined by the nature of it being a book and being in English. So people have to be able to either purchase a hard copy, which is printed at cost, or download the PDF, which is free. So anyone who has access to the Internet, anyone who has the hardware and the software to be able to go through PDFs, can actually access this for free. That definitely confines the audience, but it also attracts an audience who we hope will be engaged and will learn from it and then teach us and do better. So we're primarily looking at people who can understand science and art, but who may not be specialists in science and art. That definitely covers scientists and artists. We are looking at our peers. We very much hope to reach our peers positively, whether they're in geography or humanities or physical sciences or social sciences, or professions like law, medicine, social work and engineering. So people who do have some form of university education, a bit of an intellectual background, and can respond to different forms of science and art, that is our peers, that is people who may have a bit of education or background, but then are in different professions, different careers. That's the first audience. The second audience is we do very much hope to draw in people who may not have realized that they can gain plenty from science and art, and especially in its combination. We know how difficult it is for many people day to day. We live on the edge of precariousness to a large extent, whether it's jobs, careers, families, not being able to make ends meet, recognizing that unfortunately certain leaders abuse their power to create a conflict that almost no one wants and certainly no one needs. We hope that we're able to reach these people by bringing that H word. A bit of hope to recognize the subtitle of the book being Imaginaries and Inspirations to try and tap into their imagination, to try and inspire them that there is better out there despite the difficulties, and that science and art have so much to offer, but also so much to gain. So maybe the inspiration will be for them to become a scientist or an artist. Maybe the imaginary will be for them to engage with us and help us do our work better. So fundamentally, in sum, the audience is humanity, but the practicality of it is any book is very much niche. And we are hoping to reach out to people who are already engaged in science and art, but maybe not in these disciplines, not in these areas, but certainly beyond that, much wider, again, deliberately to try and bring science and art to society.

Stentor Danielson (12:46)

So I feel like in some ways you just kind of described the audience of the New Books Network as well, that we're trying to reach some of the same. Same people that you're hoping that this book reaches. So nice, nice synergy there. So there are 18 chapters in the book. And so, you know, we don't really have time to, like, go through them, each kind of one by one. So instead, what I'd like to do is ask you about a few themes that kind of crop up across a bunch of the different contributions to the book and see if you can say a little bit about how that theme relates to Antarctica, what some of the different contributors have said about that theme in their different, different chapters of the book. And the first one that I want to ask about is imperialism and colonialism, because, you know, you talked a bit about, we have the Antarctic Treaty that makes Antarctica kind of a distinct space that nobody can, you know, have an internationally recognized territorial claim there. But then the. The history of it is still really tied up in kind of the ongoing reality of imperialism and colonialism, the world. So can you say a little bit about how the different authors address those themes?

Elon Kelman (13:56)

Yeah. So this makes Antarctica and Antarcticness so unique in the world. The fact that there is no indigenous peoples there. Well, at least as far as we know, that it is very hard to get to and very expensive to get to, and the environment can be very harsh. So even if you do arrive there, you have to be certain that you have the equipment, the skills and the mentality in order to manage to survive there. This lent itself very well to the dominant cultures over the past centuries, who were the imperialists, who were the colonialists. And this theme is really about control. The whole idea behind it is how can we dominate? How can we control people and land, which for Antarctica, wide open, because it's a land without people. And so a lot of the authors recognize this. Obviously, it's part of the history. We cannot deny it. But we are very lucky to be in the time frame when we can reflect critiquingly. Critiquingly means thinking about the goods and the bads. So of course, we're going to criticize, that's our privilege and that's our right. We also have to accept that we would have probably acted very similarly if we'd been in the same position at that time. So it's not really about blaming, just recognizing the imperialist, colonialist attitudes which prevailed, which really pushed forward and created a lot of the mindset we have of the continent. But now it's time to move on, to recognize the disadvantages and how we can do better. For example, we talk about sort of 2020, 2021 ish being the 200th anniversary of Antarctica's discovery with discovery in quotation marks. Because what it means is that the people who were set to record history, that is from the dominant cultures from the dominant countries over the past centuries did reach Antarctica and were able to say, yes, this is a continent. There is actually some dispute regarding who was first within these dominant cultures. But we still have this mindset that it was completely unknown, completely undiscovered until certain people managed to have a sighting and then officially, whatever that means, record it. But do we really know? We are well aware that so many cultures from the Southern hemisphere were phenomenal voyagers. How many of them set out south, reached Antarctica, but then maybe didn't have the equipment or were simply unlucky and so they died? All traces would have been lost. When we look at legends, it seems increasingly clear that the Maori in New Zealand have legends or stories of myths, whatever word you want to use, indicating that some of them reached Antarctica and returned. How do we verify it? Well, it's hard. We debate, we discuss, but it does show that this whole mindset that certain people from the Northern hemisphere and countries then were able to finally discover the southern continent and were able to dominate it and claim it. These claims come from seven countries. But in a remarkable feat of foresight, humanity did implement the Antarctic Treaty, which neither accepts nor denies these claims, thereby impeding the whole colonialist imperialist attitude that is further embodied by the authors in this book. Going into the very strong and well known debates about the first known person to reach the South Pole, and it's this whole debate between the Norwegian Amundsen and the Brit Scott, it's absolutely certain that Amundsen reached first. That's not in dispute.

Stentor Danielson (17:59)

But.

Elon Kelman (17:59)

But people also recognized that there were all sorts of politics, cultural aspects and different interests which made it into this real man versus man competition in order to claim the land and say that we are the best for the country. Which contrasts with the first woman to reach the South Pole where five, six women scientists were flown into the South Pole. They had to work out who would be first to set foot. So when the back of the plane went down they all linked arms and stepped out together. These are the aspects which come through in the chapter on science diplomacy, the chapter on Antarctic based life, the chapter on how to survive, how to create very good scientific and exploratory teams in Antarctica, as well as the expedition leader, because they're recognizing this whole idea of man over nature, this whole idea of humanity trying to dominate a piece of land is something which we are moving beyond and instead it's about linking arms as humanity stepping out in such a way that we survive because we don't want to die, but also in such a way that we don't exploit, over exploit, kill the land, recognize what the land, what the place, what the location gives to us. So seeking control has very much dominated these narratives of Antarctica and Antarcticness. What the chapters do is constructively critique it, accept the past while looking forward to a future which is much less colonialist, much less imperialist, much less real man, if not humanity dominating nature, and instead all of us working together in order to do better for ourselves and for the continent we all love A.

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Stentor Danielson (21:23)

Okay, that makes a good segue, actually into the next theme that I wanted to ask you to talk about, which is the environment. Because as you said, Antarctica is on the one hand, you see it as this harsh environment that's really challenging to survive in. But then on the other hand, we think of it as this really fragile place threatened by things like climate change. So how do some of the authors in the book deal with these questions of environment, environmentalism with respect to Antarctica?

Elon Kelman (21:51)

This is actually the power and the beauty of the visualizations. So one of the chapters is a photo essay about traveling to the Antarctic. What the journey means, what their arrival means. It has all of the usual descriptors that we think about with cold, ice, white, hostile, but through it also comes the gorgeousness. Through it comes the landscape. Through it comes the unusualness of a human being in that place. And also recognizing that even though we feel the harshness and the lethality, of course, many animals, many plants, many microbes make it their home and thrive there. Other elements of this come through in the artistic chapters. So there's one author who does solography, which is basically taking a pinhole camera and a very long exposure in order to map the sun going across the sky. And given that Antarctica is at the southern end, during the summer months, the sun is in the sky 24 hours, you get these absolutely wonderful patterns being mapped out. This is part of the appeal of Antarctica, not just the harshness, this is part of the life giving, nature giving elements. Not just the death, not just the injuries, not just the dangers. And similarly, moving from sort of colonialism to this idea of environment, there is one chapter with an artist using photography which is called the Decolonial perspective of Antarcticness. Decolonial. She takes elements of Antarctica. She also looks for different geometries that she can create in Antarctica and then creates art photography from that to show what the environment can offer if we're going to look. Other aspects regarding what people seek, regarding the wildlife, regarding landscape, come through in the tourism chapter. And also there is one chapter on a program called Homeward Bound, which looks for scientific and technical women leaders in order to bring them together on an Antarctic voyage of self discovery and scientific discovery. The artistic writing, the wonderful, powerful, wonderfully powerful employment prosecution, which comes through is an exploration of the environment as reflected in an exploration of themselves. So they talk about crossing the Drake Passage from the southern tip of South America to The northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. And it can be some of the worst storms that people will experience in a boat, or it can be placid, what they call the Drake Lake. The environment controls us. We are the ones who are subsumed by what the environment does to us. And it's both good and bad. Yes, it can kill. Yes, it is incredibly dangerous, but it's also incredibly inspiring. It also creates imaginations externally and internally, and brings to the fore what we are trying to do with Antarctica through the treaty, through, through art, through the imagination, through the inspiration, while also recognizing how much Antarctica gives to the world. And you mentioned climate change and what happens in Antarctica affects the globe. So it is a real concern, the rapidity of the changes. It is a real concern, the substantiveness of the changes. But what is also so important in this book is that in the same way that I use climate change as one connector from disasters to health, but I don't let it dominate. The authors recognize the challenges which climate change brings, particularly human caused climate change. They recognize how it does show the challenges we face in the globe, but they don't let it dominate because human caused climate change is a major issue. No one can deny that. But it's not always the most important, it's not always the largest influence. It is one among many which must be considered within the environment of Antarctica.

Stentor Danielson (26:19)

Yeah, and I can actually kind of testify to the effectiveness of that aspect of the book, because climate change is the context where I've mostly, you know, read about, engaged with Antarctica. And I think the book does a good job of sort of showing the broader range of what ways to think about Antarctica and putting that climate change dimension in the context of so many other things about the continent. So then the third theme that I wanted to ask you to talk a bit about is one you've touched on a little bit in your early answers, which is gender. So there's, you know, these narratives of this kind of, you know, manly exploration of Antarctica as contrasted with the example you gave of the all women groups stepping off the plane together. So could you talk a bit about how gender has played a role in our understanding of Antarctica and what kind of a place it is.

Elon Kelman (27:19)

It's actually a huge gap in terms of understandings. Some of our authors touch upon it, some of them do not. It is intriguing to see, for example, the chapter, particularly on the Antarctic based life from 1942 to 1982, this was really a man's world and in fact, women, absolutely ridiculously, women were banned from the continent for quite a while. So this is very much showing how the imperialism and the colonialism tried to create an environment which was highly gendered. Yet some of the other chapters, such as looking at the effectiveness of our Antarctic teams and how to ensure that teams in Antarctica can be effective, looking at different artistic aspects, and then the tourism gender does not come into it in a large degree. Its absence is notable. It is certainly possibilities for chapters which could have been done, but no one volunteered. So it is an area to think further about and try and see how much we still gender Antarctica and Antarcticness and how much we don't. Even the Homeward Bound chapter is absolutely fascinating because they do feminize the planet. They refer to the Earth as female. And I discussed with the lead author about that, and she made the decision that that's what she wanted to write. So is this good? Is this bad? Well, look, other people can judge. For me, the point is to raise it, to question it and to investigate, to determine how gendered Antarctica has been. But is it the same now? What is the percentage of men and women, boys and girls, in tourists, in science, in explorers? Does it have meaning to be the first woman doing something in Antarctica, as opposed to the first man or first person? So these elements of Antarcticness are not explored that well. It's more a subtext or a hidden theme which people can draw on from as much as they want or just say, actually, we need a lot more. And same with the photographs, same with the paintings. How many of them are merely landscapes or wildlife? How many involve people? And when people are outdoors in Antarctica, they tend to be quite covered up in terms of the clothes for survival. Does that degender or desex because it may be harder to tell women from men? Is that an assumption? Does it make any difference? So these are absolutely the questions which are raised but not answered.

Stentor Danielson (30:04)

Okay, then. I also wanted to ask a little bit about the kind of the process of the book. What was it like working with such a diversity of authors that were creating such different kinds of contributions to the.

Elon Kelman (30:22)

Book that was a pleasure of doing it every day, Working on Antarcticness, I was learning, I was gaining, I was having fun, I was questioning my own research, I was questioning my own art and thinking, what don't I do? How could I move forward? So this is actually why we edit books, rather than saying, oh, I'm just going to slap together a collection and hope that it works. It really is a construction process. It really is a thinking process. It's trying to make it make sense. It's trying to ensure that it connects while nonetheless thriving on the diversity. So it was wonderful getting to know the authors, having chats with them, having a lot of emails with them, just seeing where they wanted to go with their chapter, seeing how it would fit into the book. I definitely tried to give a lot of autonomy to each of the authors to pursue their own pathways in their own way for their own material. I hope I succeeded, but they can certainly judge me on that, and they can indicate whether maybe at times I was too prescriptive or not prescriptive enough. It was then so interesting to try to amalgamate the collection, put it in order, find themes, and ensure that seeking similarities did not disparage the differences. This is why being a scientist, having a scientific career is just amazing. Every day, every hour can be different. We have the luxury of time to just play around with the jigsaw puzzle and see what picture emerges when we put it together. We have the option of saying, you know, this just didn't work. Let me try five other ways and then I'll pick the best. So this is how we think. This is how we create knowledge. This is how we bring people together who may never, ever have thought of collaborating. And this is how we try to ensure that the knowledge, the product which we result in is a process, but mostly a process for society trying to give something back, trying to give that knowledge back in order for people to do better for themselves and for the world based on science.

Stentor Danielson (32:38)

And I think that leads nicely into my next question, which is that your conclusion has the title not Concluding Antarcticness. So where do you think our consideration of Antarcticness should go after this book? What's kind of the next thing that we should be looking for in thinking about Antarctica?

Elon Kelman (33:05)

I want people to do better. I take a lot of pride in the volume. I hope, and think it's having a positive impact, again, making people imagine and inspiring people. But I make mistakes and I don't do things perfectly. So where I want to go next is someone to grab the idea and go forward with it. This actually very much comes to some extent from the chapter on the Antarctic flags project, which is a wonderful rendition of how someone's idea has turned into a worldwide influence. Getting school children to design flags for the Antarctic, which people going to the Antarctic then display and send it back to the school saying, look, your flag made it to Antarctica. But it doesn't stop with that, because the kids, we hope, will then realize the importance of the continent, will then realize the importance of exploration, will then realize the importance of science and be influenced to pursue those careers in order to do better for humanity. And that really is, to a large extent, that Antarctic Flags chapter is an allegory for the book in saying we don't conclude with one product because the product of a book is a process. But the end state of that volume is simply part of the process. I therefore want people to take it to change for the better and to think about what I didn't do, to think about where I erred, to think about where I didn't quite get there and simply do better. This book is also a bit of a sequence. So the first book which I did along these lines was Arcticness. That was published in 2017. Again, I edited that. That volume had just an incredible collection of authors contributing all sorts of different styles of chapters. Then there's Antarcticness. And the open question is, how comparable are the two poles? Well, they are both high latitude, they are both cold. But to some extent, the similarities end because the countries around the Arctic claim the territory. There are many indigenous peoples who are seeking, quite rightly, their own land and their own lives and livelihoods around the North Pole. And also the North Pole is surrounded by is an ocean which is surrounded by land, whereas the South Pole Antarctic is land surrounded by an ocean. Should we be thinking about polarness? Will someone take the gauntlet and do better than Arcticness and Antarcticness in order to produce polarness? Or does a comparison not work? How do we want to better integrate south of 60 degrees south with the rest of the planet? Does the whole concept of adding the suffix ness dilute the meaning, or does it create the meaning? So with one book, with simply one idea and a finite number of chapters, it simply was not possible for me to conclude this product is the very beginning of a long process for us to use science, to use art, to use our combination to inspire people, to create imagination, and to try to do so much better for ourselves and for the planet than we are at the moment.

Stentor Danielson (36:40)

Well, hopefully we've at least inspired people to check out this book, and then hopefully the book will also inspire them to go farther. So now turning around to yourself, what are you doing next? What's your next big project coming down the line?

Elon Kelman (36:59)

So the sad reality is that a lot of the research we do is funded from grants, is projects that may come from government research agencies. It may be the private sector, philanthropists, it may be the nonprofit sector, but we are to a large extent subservient to people who want to fund a certain research Project Antarcticness was not funded, Arcticness was not funded, which is part of the luxury. We have to carve out some of our own time in order to simply pursue creativity, pursue our own interests. But when it comes to trying to support early career researchers, such as PhD students and postdoctoral research associates, they have to be paid and the money has to come from somewhere. So a large proportion of my research time is taken up by two funded projects, both of them on climate change and health. One is global. We're looking at global indicators of public health, particularly how they are impacted, how they are influenced by climate change. I'm especially involved in an indicator on migration, trying to develop analyses to have global indicators of climate change impacting migration and then health. The other climate change and health project is local rather than global. We have two locations, a village in Trinidad in the Caribbean and a village in southern Alaska. We are talking to local environmental groups in order to try and understand their interests with respect to climate change health interactions. So those are the two funded projects with just amazing teams, really, really fantastic people who are so energetic, so intelligent, so creative, and we're hoping that both of them are feeding back to the people who need the knowledge most in order to support them in dealing with, with all the wide social environmental changes that affect us all. But because we do have sort of our jobs with some time to look beyond funded research, it's also thinking about what projects do I want, where do I want to go, and there's a couple of areas that are of interest. So I've done a lot of work on what's called disaster diplomacy, which I also link to health diplomacy, trying to see whether or not dealing with disasters, either preventing them or responding to them, trying to look at whether or not dealing with health issues from global to local, and this includes climate change. So climate change diplomacy, whether or not dealing with these issues can bring us together. We see just the horror of war, the ridiculous everyday violence that people experience, so much hatred. But then we see these challenges regarding health, regarding disasters and the influences of climate change and other environmental changes. Can we tackle both simultaneously? Can we bring human beings together to do better for each other through thinking about the issues which affect us all? And I'm definitely exploring, trying to get more projects in this area. And then the other big one is islands. Again it goes back to island studies. It looks at the links with cities, because a lot of cities are islands, whether it's New York, Manhattan being an island, Long island being an island, Bangkok, Stockholm, Lagos, all of these big cities comprise islands. So we're not just focusing on insularity, we're also looking at islanders in a wider context in order to see how people respond in different ways to different changes and to different environments. It's not just about saying, oh, you know, they're so remote and isolated and marginalized, which is always a part truth, because people can feel so small and so remote in a huge mega city by being anonymous and by being around 7 or 10 million people. It's about saying, what do islanders want and need? Recognizing the huge, huge diversity among them, but also what can they give to the world? So I live and work in London, a world megacity. But during my research, during my travels, during my discussions with people who have never been to a megacity, I just learned so much that I can apply in my own location, in my own community. And I would like to do a lot more work trying to look at the history and differences and similarities of different islands and islanders around the world and see how they apply in much wider environments, including making my own city better for life and livelihood.

Stentor Danielson (41:48)

All right, well, that's a lot of stuff you've got going on and it all sounds really, really interesting. So, Dr. Kelman, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Elon Kelman (41:58)

Well, thanks so much for the opportunity and looking forward to hearing from listeners. I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter. Please connect, tell me what I'm doing wrong and hopefully tell me a little bit of what I'm doing right.

Stentor Danielson (42:09)

All right, you just heard a conversation with Elon Kelman, editor, excuse me, of Inspirations and imaginaries published this year by UCL Press.

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