Tom Bailey: Can a walk across the Arctic be art?
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How does Tom Bailey define a trek as a piece of art before he sets out?
If you're missing...
Theatre is an odd art form for me because so much of it happens closed off from nature.
You go into a black studio under heavy stage lights, there's a sort of certain fabricated artifice that shuts nature out. For me, I'm finding myself, I need that connection with nature more and more.
For Tom Bailey, the journey is the art. He's about to cross the Arctic borderlands of Norway, Russia, Finland and Sweden, all 600 kilometres, by ski, sled, foot and boat. It's deliberately slow. He'll be taking photos, recording voice notes and gathering materials, stories and emotions from this rapidly changing landscape. This is the documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service, where we investigate the creative process. I'm Jo Morris and today I'm following theatre maker Tom on his icy trek from Cherkones in the far north to Stamson in the Norwegian Lofoten Islands. But before he sets out, he needs to prepare. Hello, hey. Hi Tom, I'm Jo. Good to meet you. Come in.
Thanks for making the journey. We are going up to the top of the house. That's my kit packing room.
How many floors are we going up?
Going up three floors, just this little garret at the top of the house. And welcome to the... Well, you've got a lot of kit, haven't you? A lot of kit. At some point, I'm going to need to swap out. The winter stuff will be carried in a sled behind me.
Where do we start?
Well, big down jacket, waterproof trousers... Petrol stove. I've got a camping kettle. Survival bag. Head torch. Got some compede. So for those blisters that I know are going to happen that are going to bring tears to my eyes. These are my super warm mittens.
And what are you expecting the temperature to be? Do you know?
At the beginning, anywhere between minus 35 and plus 5. Perhaps most days to hover maybe around minus 15. What are you like in the cold, Tom? Sadly, my circulation in my hands and feet is not great. So it's going to be very difficult to put up the tent. I guess that brings me to my lovely... Reindeer skin.
What is this? Yeah, you've got a whole reindeer skin.
A whole reindeer skin. Up in northern Norway and Finland, reindeer herding is the main source of industry for, say, Sami people. So the reason for taking it is to actually kind of fit in with part of the artwork that we're looking to do. What are you using it for? Potentially wearing it at some points. It's very, very useful to have out to maybe sit on or to keep warm.
How are you going to wear it? Show me.
Maybe, I think this could become some sort of cape or something if I need to keep warm.
I mean, it's itchy.
Well, I found myself loving this kind of pattern on the inside of the skin. It's really quite beautiful and kind of fits into a theme of marking and mapping, which... It's going to be a cool part of this journey. So that takes me to trying to find a persona that I feel asks an important artistic question, but also allows me to play a bit as a theatre person. So I guess one of the big questions for me right now is at a time of climate change. How can nature be represented within our democratic system? I'm journeying as me, but also exploring as I go this idea that it's a lost reindeer on a migration journey to kind of explore and critique the way that these humans have put geopolitical borders on space.
So looking at space and geography from the animal perspective is something that allows license to play, but also a very serious question about how can nature, or reindeer in this case, be represented in the human democratic system? So you're imagining yourself as a lost reindeer? mean it's all over the news right now because of what donald trump's saying about you know claiming greenland and and all of this and it's brought this whole question of what is the arctic and who owns it currently we've got this big bit of sea ice i.e the arctic that is melting quite fast and that's unclaimed it's open sea it's a big big geopolitical question what goes on there affects everyone in the world how do you feel about being by yourself
Yeah, to be honest, I'm a bit of a hermit.
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