This project is based around the new shipping route proposed by Maersk that would pass through the North Pole (taking advantage of the space created by the melting ice caps), which was proposed specifically to avoid the “risk” that has come to define the Suez Canal passageway. The speculatively staged fiction of the opening ceremony for the new shipping route, using historical artifacts from the Suez Canal, looks at the role that risk and preemptive possibilities play in shipping and speculative securitization. The work creates a trajectory between sets of relations: eg, insurance documents that are produced by a company that makes fake snow for film sets, and the melting Arctic snow that allows for Maersk's route. These artifacts abstractly narrate the Brilliant Virtuoso, a ship who staged its own highjacking and set itself on fire, as a way of obtaining insurance money.
