Alex Hartley

Why did they make Drop City out of triangular-form, geodesic domes?

'Because normal houses were for squares, I literally think it was that - a way of rejecting how ordinary people lived. Buckminster Fuller was teaching at the time and two hard-working guys came with his plans and pulled everyone else along. Actually it fell to bits because the others occupying the domes didn't help out in the community, so they went and built another one in Arizona. My conceit here is that this is one of those domes that the hippies have moved out of and my grumpy man in the photo has moved in.'

Which is you…

'Yes and I am quite grumpy today because a fox ate one of my chickens last night.'

The idea resonates with the current Occupy movement, but I must ask: how much time do you spend here?

'At least two or three days a week. I've been down to St Paul's a few times as well just to see how much energy is there. I was wondering whether I could offer this structure to them afterwards because it's pretty well insulated, although it all comes from a capitalist world. I've always been interested in such communities, particularly in religions or cults, but nearly always because of how they go wrong and how, in order to practice their weird stuff freely, they have to remove themselves from society to wilderness spaces. Whereas the Occupy movement is doing that within a city, which is quite different.'

Is 'Nowhereisland' also built to fail, as the citizens can't live there?

'Yes, it's not a utopian project and that's going to come as a surprise to everyone else. My bit, which is the island sculpture - the actual land mass itself is super-bleak, grey, grubby and somewhat other - is the symbol, but “Nowhereisland” is really its population, the citizens who join up.'

How did you claim the island?

'In 2004, on a Cape Farewell trip (to Svalbard), we sighted this football-sized strip of ice and rock detached from the glacier and it was really exciting, knowing I was the first person to stand on it. Then I had another two years of speaking to the Norwegian government to name it and make it a new country before I could bring it into international waters. The Norwegians don't want it back as it will have microbes from here they don't want and it's dissipating all the time, a third of it has already gone.'

'Nowhereisland' is stopping off all along the south coast in 2012, so how did that come about?

'I had wanted to drag it up the Thames, but it's not meant to be seen that close up. It will always be about 300 metres off shore but with a land-based “embassy” that allows people to engage with the object itself. The Olympics is a time when all the countries of the world come together and so there's a chance to talk about borderless nations, although I'm sure Cornish separatists will swim out and try to board it.'