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The New Discoveries Project was concieved by the R.G.S. division for the studies of imaginary lands. This division investigates the geography – physical and political – of utopias, fairy lands, fictionary states and similar entities.
New Discoveries began in spring 2003 with an exhibition of Kontinen & Kochta at the Harakka Telegraph Station Exhibition Center. The central piece of the show was a scale model of the re-discovered "third" pole of the northern Hemisphere: »the utopian North Pole«. For that work theories and fictional writings were gathered which all project a perfect society onto the north pole. In many of the writings a hole at the pole was suggested as the entrance to the inner earth. Vast new continents inhabitated by different forms of highly developed civilizations were assumed. These theories is also known as "The Hollow Earth" theory. It has a lot of advocates even today. The gathered information concerning the an utopia at the north pole were transformed into a scale model of the "third" pole.
The notion of a paradise-like country behind the Frigid Zone of ice shields goes back to greek ideas. Some tousand years later William F. Warren amass evidences in his 500 pages treatise »Paradise Found«, that the site of ancient Eden was actually located right at the North Pole. Here Adam and Eve were created.
Captain John Cleves Symmes announced in 1818 that the earth consists of concentric spheres with opening at both poles. He was convinced that live flourished on the inside of the spheres. He never was able to find enough support for an arctic expedition in search of the polar hole.
His theory nevertheless inspired a number of fictionary writings like Edgar Allan Poes fantastic »Narrative of Gordon Arthur Pym«. Another book tells the story of a boat journey entering the inside of the earth at the northern hole. The journey ends with the discovery of a new continent, inhabitated by a friendly race living in a socialist utopia.
A later proponent of the hollow Earth Doctrine, Marshal B. Gardner, studied with great care the accounts of expeditions claiming to have reached the North Pole. He could show, that not anyone of the explorers ever reached the pole, as they otherwise would have encounterd the northern hole and the paradise inside.
The great visionary and utopian leader Cyrus Reed Teed proved with his Cellular Cosmogeny that the earth is like an egg shell and that we actually live inside, like in a safe and protective womb. Teed obtained some land to build an utopian town »New Jerusalem« for the followers of his theory; arrangements were made to accomodate 8 million believers.
As these examples might prove, The North Pole has provided the field for great visions and desires. The countless expedetitions to this insignificant piece of land, facing hardship, starvation, madness and death can not motivated by the simple wish to reach that particular point. We believe, that all explorers were (and are still today) urged by some larger vision: the search for utopia.
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