“They say the North is where people are happiest. Where systems are fair, forests are vast, and silence is a virtue. The North pulls like a compass — quietly, powerfully. But where exactly is it pointing?”

This work considers the North not as a place, but as a projection — a magnetic field shaped by longing, policy, and myth. For those who migrate northwards, the idea of the North is not just geographic; it is symbolic, utopian, often imagined long before it is inhabited.

Orientation is never absolute. Magnetic north and geographic north never fully align; they drift — subtly but persistently. So do people.

Using global aviation data from OurAirports and magnetic declination coefficients provided by NOAA’s World Magnetic Model, this piece visualises how even the most precise infrastructures are affected by invisible forces. Each of the 15,249 red vectors in the artwork represents a real-world runway, oriented according to its magnetic heading. These lines do not point to a single truth — they shift, resist, curve away.

The work was generated using custom geospatial tools and Python scripts that parsed, cleaned, and processed the raw datasets. It was then rendered into scalable vector graphics (SVG) and animated line-by-line, visualising each runway as a moment of redirection. The animation loops indefinitely — just as magnetic deviation does not stop, and orientation remains a moving target.

While the animated version is intended for screen-based installations, the piece is also designed to be printed on canvas at a scale of 300 × 150 cm, maintaining the 2:1 aspect ratio typical of aeronautical charts. The print version presents the same data statically: thousands of red (or other) lines on a black field, suspended between abstraction and geography.

By referencing Missä on suuri pohjoinen (Where is the Big North) by Rosa Liksom, the work aligns with her tension between territory and ideology. Between the vastness of what the North is, and the narrowness of how it is imagined. Like Liksom, this piece asks whether the North is still a promise, or whether it has become a brand. Magnetic not for its accuracy, but for its myth.

It presents the North as both destination and distortion, and asks:

What does it mean to arrive in a place built on stories you were never part of?

Mohamed Louanjli