Tier 1 Finalist: Agri Cultures Seed Links Project Svalbard Norway

A single grain of wheat from the interior of a 133 year-dead 4.7m, salt water crocodile shot 1887 at the mouth of the no-longer-existing Serangoon river Singapore and kept for over a century in the Raffles Museum, migrated to the arctic circle was ceremonially buried in Platåberget, adjacent to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank on 10th June 2019. This was part of a contemproary art work by the Singapore-situated Migrant Ecologies Project. The Migrant Ecologies Project proposal was called Seeding Stories: A Guide to the Interior of a Salt Water Crocodile.

The work was selected as one of four Tier 1 finalists by an international jury of artists and scientists from 100 entries from all over the world for an exhibition called Agri Cultures Seed Links. Agri Cultures Seed Links is the brainchild of Dr Fern Wickson from the centre for Biosafety at The Arctic University Tromsø Norway. Dr Wickson believes that natures and cultures are intertwined and wanted to to generate a parallel initiative to remember 21 century cultural relationships with plants and seeds, next door to the world famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The main specification for proposals was that they were to be able to fit the dimensions of a box used to house the seed samples in the ‘Doomsday Vault’.
Migrant Ecologies Project artists led by Lucy Davis travelled to Svalbard with this very special grain of wheat and other artistic-offerings as one of four Top Tier finalists for a burial ceremony in which the works were offered to the mountain and placed to rest in Gruve/Mine 3, next to the Svalbard Global Seed Bank.