Wednesday 31st December & Thursday 1 January, BBC Radio 4
6.00-9.00am and 4.30-5.00pm
Jarvis Cocker edited the last Today Programme of the year, 6.00-9.00am on December 31st, highlights from the show are available to listen again online.
The next day & year, voyager Quentin Cooper hosted a special The Material World Cape Farewell Show on New Year’s Day, with a programme billed as a ‘science-meets-art-meets-a-fair-bit-of-music special from the cold but not quite as cold as they used to be waters off the west coast of Greenland’.
Listen again online The Material World on BBC Radio 4 ›
Listen to Shlomo’s new Podcast, recorded during the expedition. It features exclusive new material from Martha Wainwright, music from Feist, Jarvis Cocker and interviews with Marcus Brigstocke, Vanessa Carlton and Laurie Anderson.
Listen at: shlo.co.uk/podcast ›
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By Shlomo
- Sunday 14 Dec, 14:00
Join us on Friday 9 January 2009
Join Arctic voyagers Shlomo, Lemn Sissay and Quentin Cooper for an evening of Arctic stories and performances at Southbank Centre, guided by local Uummannaq resident Ludvig Hammeken. Uummannaq is the most northerly settlement we visited during the expedition, home to our Inuit guide Ludvig, 1400 people and 3000 howling dogs. This unique place will inspire a day of school workshops and evening of film and performance at London’s Southbank Centre.
Read blog posts from Uummannaq ›
“Two weeks ago I was sat on a boat in the Arctic eating breakfast next to Jarvis Cocker. And, no, it wasn’t a dream. Well, it might have been a dream, but if it is I haven’t woken up yet so please don’t wake me when you leave…” Read Hannah’s article on the Disko Bay expedition written for online magazine Tweakerzine.
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David Buckland and KT Tunstall discuss personal responses to the voyage, being in an Arctic environment, new songs, shifting practice and engaging with climate change as an artist.
Look out for “Jarvis in the Arctic – Ten musicians, one vanishing ice cap” a feature on the Disko Bay expedition written by Michèle Noach, and The Word magazine’s cover feature for December 2008 (Issue 70).
Sunday 26 October 2008, 5.30-7.30pm, BBC Radio 6
Jarvis Cocker keeps Stephen Merchant’s seat warm on BBC Radio 6 as he plays a shed load of great ‘mood swing’ tracks, plus Martha Wainwright performs live and David Buckland talks about Cape Farewell and the 2008 Disko Bay Expedition. The archive of this show is available on the BBC iPlayer until 2 November 2008.
10 days of constant curiosity both from the scientists and artists have run me/us ragged. Western Greenland/Arctic has worked its magic, the debate has been constant and fledgling art processes have engaged and been executed, all of which have been well diarised in the blogs for this expedition.
Intellectual climate input was achieved with a series of daily talks: two given by the onboard scientists, three by the two Inuit guides and Dr Ko de Korte, Sunand Prasad tackled contraction and convergence, Quentin Cooper gave a great talk on ‘Cape Farewell’, Joe Smith on Carbon Trading and market response, Ryuichi Sakamoto, KT Tunstall, Chris Wainwright and Francesca Galeazzi led a lively discussion on the artists response/creativity and a final talk led by Marcus Brigstocke and Joe Smith addressed just how important it is to feel ‘up’ and empowered by things climate rather than crawl into a hole of despair. These were focussed discussions but all this input led to an endless dialogue in small breakout sessions where we all talked one on one over dinner and wine (and vodka). Lively!
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Friday, September 26th
Plane landing at Kangerlussuaq
We could see the east coast of Greenland, indifferent, majestic, and there they were – icebergs from above!! Aaaarrr!! We were suddenly all toddlers, looking down on the little minty sailboats being shoved out of the nest of the shore, forced to take off on voyages from which they would never return. Ever diminishing, ever more alone. Gliding off into the vastness.
5 hours sailing down the gargantuan straight of Sondre Stromfjord, the light starts to get soaked up by the time. Like a waking dream. Milky green sea that looks alive. A beautifully perfected valley scraped out of the landscape as our guide, singing us out of its mouth. The weirdness. The spook. That half-light that makes you feel like the whites of your eyes are glowing. A low-lying cloud that turns a scottish landscape into a science fiction set. The boat is full and buzzing like a hive. The Belgian-Danish bar and restaurant manager Jan (Yan? Xian?!) has the best and weirdest burr on his r’s I’ve ever heard. Want to teach him the Ragged Rascal Ran tongue twister.
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Jarvis Cocker speaks about the voyage, scraps, fjords, climate change and what he’s experienced. “I’ll never forget it that’s for sure…”
I’m going home in the morning. It’s been wonderful and exhilarating and beautiful but I’m ready to get back to my family now who are all of those things only much much louder.
The good news is that we’ve solved that whole pesky climate change fiasco. It turns out it was the sun. It’s heat from the sun that is causing global warming. The sunshine did it. It’s not surprising, I mean when you look at the sun you have admit it does look hot doesn’t it. In scientific terms what’s happened is that the sun has sent a lot of heat energy down to earth for many hundreds of thousands of years making what scientists refer to as ‘sunny days’ (forgive the jargon but it’s important to be accurate I think). Now plants and little creatures have absorbed these ‘sunny days’ and then, sadly but with some degree of inevitability, died with the ‘sunny day’, literally trapped within them, then they have sunk down into the earth in the form of ‘sunny day’ rich fossil fuels. These ‘sunny days’ have later been released as people have needed the ‘sunny day’ energy in the fuel in order to power all the stuff we like – hair dryers, Toyota Land Cruisers, Nintendo Wii’s, fridges, life support machines, jet boats, angle poise lamps, vibrators, DVD players, aeroplanes and whirlybirds, air-conditioning units to cool the effects of a ‘sunny day’, mobile phones, electric toothbrushes, motorised carving knifes, remote controlled cars, actual cars, car museums, Top Gear, cars and machines which can exactly replicate the browning effect of a ‘sunny day’.
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You know that Apple Mac screen saver with the cosmic tracer thing swirling around? About 10 of us were stood on deck late night and looked up at the same time that it escaped out of someone’s laptop, gained gargantuan proportions and launched itself out of the sky above our heads in neon green; spinning, speeding, an incredible Catherine Wheel firework that made us all scream. I stayed out there for an hour and a half in minus ten, making myself laugh as my frozen face was about 5 seconds behind any words I tried to say. The best light show in the world.
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