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Svalbard

2020
Oh, Svalbard!

The planet’s last hope resting in the heart of a frozen mountain. In a remote archipelago somewhere between Norway and the North Pole. Under a vault carved hundreds of metres deep into the rock. Inside a bunker with millions of seeds, samples of all edible plants to feed our species in the event of a global disaster. A modern-day Noah’s Ark designed for eternal life. Ready to cope with any catastrophe, whether natural or man-made.

Few can step inside its doors, which tower monumentally like a lighthouse over the huge mass of ice and provide access to an underground control room that records and catalogues each seed, previously dehydrated and subjected to X-rays and then placed into an airtight aluminium pouch within a refrigerated chamber at a constant temperature of -18°C, an essential condition for its properties to remain intact for centuries.

Stored on endless shelves, the boxes cover the majority of species that have ever been cultivated and whose origins date back to the dawn of agriculture. The figures are simply staggering: 150,000 varieties of wheat and rice, 80,000 of barley, 40,000 of beans and 25,000 of soya beans sit alongside more exotic seeds, such as the butterfly pea, the sacred corn of the Cherokee, the Bambara groundnut, the Asian cowpea or the unusual Estonian potato, among many others.

Un tesoro de información genética al que contribuye la mayoría de naciones, ya sea Estados Unidos o Burundi, Alemania o Rusia, Irak o Corea del Norte, sin diferencias ni distinciones. Todas mediante valiosos aportes. Muestras irrepetibles: no se aceptan duplicados ni copias. Y sólo en caso de emergencia del país donante se permite retirarlas. Que las simientes no traspasen sus herméticas compuertas, que no regresen otra vez a la tierra es una señal, un signo de que el Apocalipsis (aún) no ha llegado.

So we’ve travelled here, to the world’s seed bank, to design this new collection of earrings and necklaces that reflect two things: on the one hand, its untamed surroundings, with hypnotic icebergs, jagged glaciers and the silver-tinged light of Arctic nights caressing the anthracite walls that safeguard the world’s plants; and on the other, the seeds themselves, the true stars, with their organic and sinuous shapes in shades of gold, burgundy and translucent black. Miniature capsules bursting with life. With their limitless power and their extraordinary might, always ready to be thawed to rescue humankind again.