Arctic Ice Chess at Aarhus University

Last Friday, the second game of Arctic Ice Chess was played at the Danish School of Education, University of Århus. The game was between Jonas Andreas Lysgaard, Associate Professor at University of Århus, and Keith Brander, lead author for the fisheries and marine ecosystem sections of the fourth IPCC report, for which he and his team were awarded a share of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. I watched the video from Sydney and received comments from the indefatigable and amazing Malou Solfjeld.

Jonas had a helping hand from his colleague Flemming, who gave him chess advice and contributed to the overall conversation. It was interesting to see the two of them work together, especially for tactile reasons, since Flemming is almost blind, so he had to feel the ice and the board in a perhaps even more intense way than the usual players do.

Keith came to Denmark in 1996 to work as Dr. Emeritus at the National Institute of Aquatic Resources, section for Oceans and Arctic, until he retired in 2012. Last year he obtained citizenship and he is now member of the pan-European political party VOLT.

Arctic Ice Chess game 2 was organized by Malou Solfjeld, Malou Juelskjær and SixtyEight Art Institute

Result: Keith won partly because his breath heated up his pieces and made them slide forward by themselves.

I watched the game here from Sydney as I cast another batch of bushfire ash heart sculptures which made their conversation on the climate emergency even more meaningful. Highlights of the game included the discussion about our finite planet, custodianship and sustainability of land, and how we cannot change opinions but rather behavior.

How fitting that this happened in the middle of #COP26, and how happy am I that this project is catalyzing so many wonderful conversations and connecting so many people from this project’s initial sketches in Manila, Beijing, Vienna, and Sydney. Hope you enjoyed playing and thank you all very much!

Images by Malou Solfjeld