Fostering embodied aesthetic experience and increased sense of responsibility in “The Ice Life”, a cross-disciplinary project
The Ice Life project connects its components (music, images) and scientific knowledge within a socially engaged practice in the field of environmental concerns, namely the life and the receding of glaciers.
Through this practice we are re-thinking the values of the artistic work, in order get critically engaged with the environmental aspects that nourish our artistic practice (Barrett 2016).
We see the artwork as a connection with the world, in the continuity of relational aesthetics (Bourriaud 1998, 2002) and socially engaged art (Bishop 2004). Considering glaciers as “the other” requires openness to understanding their distinctiveness and enacting “love” and mutual dignity.
Music and art, with their immersive nature, can facilitate this process of enactive listening and perception, bridging differences and approximating time scales. Making the past, present, and future of glaciers perceptible within a human time span may be able to enhance engagement and love for these natural entities.
This audio-visual staging based on field recordings of the Vatnajo kull Ice Cap (Iceland), offers an immersive experience of the metamorphosis of ice that transcends human and natural timescales, fostering an experience of mutual dignity.
By encouraging enactive listening, fostering loving sense-making, and inspiring agency in the face of climate change and glacier disappearance, the project seeks a more impactful connection with its audience.
Mariana Ungureanu, Stefan Schneider – Université Paris 8, Universität Wien. https://theicelife.org/
THE ICE MATTER, A Threshold State
IRREVERSIBLE: Death by the Drip
A sound-video installation based on the field recordings in the Vatnajökull Ice Cap, Iceland.
With the support of University Paris 8 and the Hornafjörður Research Center (University of Iceland).
Þorvarður Árnason, PhD, Director of Hornafjörður Research Center, is our indefectible guide and counsellor on the Breiðamerkurjökull and Flaajökull outlet glaciers, at the centre of our recordings.
Based on scientific documentation, this sound-video installation aims to support the interpretation of the glaciers’ life as a matter of truth, and to raise awareness about the irreversible processes leading to their rapid death.
— Mariana Ungureanu (Composer, PhD fellow at University Paris 8) – music composition & dramaturgy,
— Pétur F. Kjærnested (Video artist, Reykjavik) – original video,
— Martin Lucas (Architect, Paris) – photography and editing.
Dramaturgy
—Wounds – 0 min,
— From Drip to the Torrent – 4 min 30 sec,
— Silent Drama – 7 min 10 sec,
— Bleeding – 8 min 44 sec,
Problematic
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- “Irreversible”, is a sound-vidéo installation where the life and death of the glaciers are center stage.
- It calls into question the domination of humans on the planet’s biotopes.
- It shows the ecological threat that constitutes our developed consumerist society to the fragile living biosystems.
This is the first step in the art-science-environment project I develop on the Vatnajökull Ice Cap, Iceland, in collaboration with the Hornafjõrdur Research Center (University of Iceland).
Concept
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A performance of ice (in the way of an artist’s performance)
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A radical exercise that shows the remission of the ice in millennial glaciers as bleeding human flesh. The raw matter of ice is exposed in the manner of a body that suffers, which ends up bleeding continuously,
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An eventful art installation, not just a source of contemplation,
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The message is conveyed by the filed recordings but also by the dramaturgy,
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– The sociological dimension is essential and it’s put forward. It aims to create space in our lives for the ice, to give it a voice.
Demands to the audience
We aim to :
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Drive the public’s attention from pure information to emotion, with the hope to arouse astonishment,
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Take people out of their comfort zone, to disturb them,
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Question their way of life and their awareness of the state of the nature which surrounds us,
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Confront them with the reality of the biospheres suffering around us,
- Critisize our lives which often evolve around very egotistical pleasures, where the nature’s condition has no consideration.
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The seriousness of the documented events of the Ice Life demands that the proclaimed ecological commitments of our governments must be put into practice by means of effective actions.