Australian installation artist Ian Burns is making the most northern pieces of toast ever toasted on the flat surface of Moffen Island, just past the 80th parallel. In the summer, no one is allowed to set foot on the shore because of the many breeding walruses, but in October only a few walrus are left, and they don’t seem to mind when Ian plugs his toaster into a generator and proceeds to get the bread to the exactly right level of brownness. Afterwards he is carefully burning the legend “80° N” onto each piece of toast with a small flame. “We’ve got to get beyond the old clichés of how to respond to nature,” he grumbles. “Making toast up here seemed like the most anomalous thing I could do.”

~ Artists in the Arctic