Cape Farewell

If you could spend 10 days on a ship adrift in the Arctic with Martha Wainwright, Feist, and Sophie Calle, would you go?

Martha Wainwright, KT Tunstall, Jarvis Cocker, Feist and Vanessa Carlton
in the Arctic with Cape Farewell on the 2008 Disko Bay
Expedition. Photo: Nathan Gallagher

It sounds kind of strange, but that’s what the charitable organization Cape Farewell has been doing for the past few years. This past month, 40 international artists, journalists and scientists boarded the ship headed for Disko Bay, Greenland to visit the rapidly melting ice caps and get inspired by the arctic atmosphere. According to the project’s website, the goals of the project are to “inspire the creative team to respond to climate change both in the Arctic and on their return. On 25 September these artists, scientists, architects, comedians, musicians, playwrights, composers, engineers, film-makers and journalists journey aboard the science research vessel – Grigory Mikheev, from Kangerlussuaq to Disko Bay. The boat will then voyage across the front of the Jakobshavn Glacier, one of Greenland’s largest glaciers moving at a faster rate than ever before, losing 20 million tons of ice every day.”

Feist’s sporadic updates about the trip on her site seem a little more candid, though classically lyrical and cryptic:

“…a small white boat in the black sea…ice skyscrapers silent until cracking like gunfire…wet socks…saunas with Sophie…dogs outnumber people…saw Aurora Borealis tonight for the first time…made a wish…heading further North…no more reception…xoxo F”

I’m really hoping this doesn’t mean her next album will be called “Wet Socks and CO2”.