Russia, the phoenix coronation ?

A land of extreme geography and tormented history. An old empire, collapsed several times. Each time reborn. A first in world history. Russia is not resigned to a certain world order. With its vast hydrocarbon reserves lying dormant under the midnight sun, it has a trump card with which to chart its own course. Like a phoenix, Russia now seems to be rising from its frozen ashes. At the risk of darkening the whiteness...

"Russia, the phoenix coronation ?" thus composes a drifting navigation between these extremes in an attempt to explore the wake of a journey back from the underworld, but tirelessly raising anchor, provided some inaccessible star still shines with the sacred fire of dreams or imperial splendor... A sound sketch in fragments, of a reality of disproportion, crossed by ambivalence, life, death, beauty, horror, whiteness and darkness, pushed to their ultimate entrenchments. And perhaps these entrenchments hold some of the secrets of Russia's astonishing endurance. That painful brotherhood of peaks and abysses...

Soundscape (59') support by Fonds d'Aide à la création Radiophonique 2020 (FACR) and Creative Sound Studio (Brussels). Across Stickos. Production.

Broadcast RTBF La Première Ouïe Dire (26/06/2023), Radio Panik (09/05/2023), Radio Campus Bruxelles (24/04/2023) and Radio Vostok (Switzerland - 19/112023)

In the run-up to the Russian presidential elections in March 2018, the outcome of which is in little doubt, what is the situation in Russia today and Russian support for their president Vladimir Putin?

Radio report (24') produced in St Petersburg, Murmansk, in Russia's Far North in Sami territory and on the Arktika Train that crosses the Arctic Circle. Broadcast in Olivier Nederlandt's program "Transversales" on RTBF (March 17, 2018)

Cold War on the ice floe

By planting a flag vertically over the North Pole on August 2, a Russian expedition has reignited the muted struggle being waged in the Arctic. By making the Far North more accessible, global warming should eventually lead to new economic activities. Alongside Russia, the United States and Canada, Norway and Denmark are vying to prove their rights to the seabed, which could contain huge hydrocarbon reserves.

Published in Le Monde Diplomatique (September 2007)

Considerable hydrocarbon reserves make the Arctic the object of bitter rivalry. Russians, Americans, Canadians, Danes, Norwegians - and, more recently, China - are vying for control of its waters, each claiming its rights to the Far North. According to a study published in 2008 by the US Geophysical Survey (USGS), the Arctic holds 13% of the planet's unexplored oil deposits and 30% of potential natural gas reserves. A new Eldorado that the countries bordering the Arctic - Russia, the United States, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Iceland - intend to claim and exploit, provided their continental shelves are "extended". This potential is all the more attractive in that it lies in a geo-politically much more stable zone than the Middle East. The Arctic thus offers a means of bypassing the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and guarantees the riparian nations their own energy security, or even the possibility of meeting the growing demand from emerging powers such as China and India.

Article published in" Manière de Voir" (March 2013)