A PROJECT BY ALEXANDER CROMER

If the wound of the Middle Passage*, embedded deep within the North Atlantic ocean, represents oppressive systems, can the Arctic be a place away from those systems?

Writers such as Christina Sharpe, Dionne Brand, and Kamau Brathwaite evoke images of the North Atlantic and Middle Passage as a means of investigating contemporary black being in the African Diaspora and are representative of systematically oppressive and anti-black sociopolitical atmospheres. Ice Don’t Drown explores these evocations, while complicating them by introducing a geographic region that has non/linear relationships with the North Atlantic Ocean; the Arctic. If the wounds of Middle Passage, embedded deep within the North Atlantic Ocean, represent oppressive systems, can the Arctic be a place away from those systems? A place of resistance, disruption, and respite?

Narrated by different versions of Alexander Cromer, from different times in his life, Ice Don’t Drown explores post-colonial, chattel slavery, and maritime themes through spoken word, film, music, and sculpture. Featuring interviews from Vera Carasso, Director of Het Scheepvaartmuseum, Urwin Vyent, Director of Het Nationaal Instituut Nederlands slavernijverden, and Dr Jerzy Gawronski, Chief Municipal Archeologist of Amsterdam.