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Podcast: EMPIRE LINES
Episode: Photographs of the Polar Silk Road, Gregor Sailer (2017-2021) (EMPIRE LINES x Natural History Museum)
Description: Photographer Gregor Sailer exposes the neo-imperial scramble for resources in the Arctic Circle and the Polar Silk Road, with stills frozen in white cubes at the Natural History Museum in London.
Climate change is melting ice across the Arctic Sea, opening a channel known as ‘The Polar Silk Road’- and for traders, access to a wealth of natural resources. The term was defined by contemporary China, a nod to the long history of the the Eurasian Silk Road, characterised by the exchange of tea, spices, and disease. But these stark monochrome settings are contemporary sites of geop...