In 2004 Hartley traveled to the High Arctic with the charity Cape Farewell where, after noticing a disparity between the sea charts and the reality of the landscape, he searched for and discovered an island that had been revealed from within the melting ice of a retreating glacier. Following this, the island became the subject for many hypothetical architectural proposals and collaborations that speculated on various conceptual, utopian futures for this new island. In a playful attempt to stake a claim on the land, Hartley began a lengthy correspondence with the Norwegian government which progressed further than he ever imagined, in large part due to a poorly drawn up treaty from the 1920s that still governed the region.

The discovery, documentation, idealised architectural proposals, collaborations and legal correspondence generated during this period formed the basis of the work Undiscovered Island (2006), that travelled the world as part of Cape Farewell’s exhibition, Art and Climate Change (2006). 

Hartley applied for and won the £500,000 Cultural Olympiad Artists Take the Lead (2012) commission for his proposal to take the island out into International Waters, declare it a new nation and bring it to the UK to coincide with the London Olympic Games. Following four years of negotiation, Hartley persuaded the Norwegians to permit the activity and returned to Svalbard with a hand-picked expedition team to take the island out into the Arctic Ocean towards the North Pole and into International Waters. On the 20^th September 2011 the island was declared a new nation: Nowhereisland.

In the summer of 2012, Nowhereisland arrived in the South West of the UK towed behind a tug. The new island nation visited ports and harbours accompanied by its land-based mobile Embassy. Able to sign up both at the embassy and online, new citizens of Nowhereisland were invited to democratically contribute to an evolving constitution, engaging with this tangible yet hypothetical utopia, responding to the question, ‘What would you do if you could start again’?

Initiatives, such as a weekly letter written by different invited resident thinkers, and an online cumulative constitution which dealt with matters varying from governance and education to free ice cream on Fridays, unearthed the bewildering facets that build a community, questioning convention and promoting new possible futures. 

On Sunday 9 September 2012, at the end of Nowhereisland’s journey, the island was broken up and distributed amongst the 23,003 people, spanning 135 nationalities, who had signed up as ‘citizens of Nowhereisland’. As a final gesture, a small piece of the island was sent to the edge of space where some particles of rock from the island will remain forever in the upper-stratosphere.

Nowhereisand was produced by Situations Bristol.

A publication now here is land was funded by the citizens and produced in 2015. Printed on paper made with rock from the island , edited by Tania Kovats, Alex Hartley and Modern Activity the book details Nowhereisland’s journey from 2004 to 2012. 

www.nowhereisland.org