installation view, *gel-[archive] #5, focusTerra/ETH Zürich, 2025

*gel-[archive] #5, 2025

9-channel video, recycled screens, live camera, steel sculpture, fragments of ice cores (Rhone Glacier, Andes, unknown), text **site-specific*

«Look into the past to predict the future» emerged as a recurring principle in glaciological and related sciences. For the site-specific installation commissioned by focusTerra/ETH Zürich (2025-2027), Janis Polar discursively expands on this epistemological motif through the montage of his own image and expedition archive alongside images from the ETH Library's image archive, sourced during glaciological research (1960–2022). Across nine screens, the artist constructs short narrations as an evocative story arc using manipulated film fragments, documents, personal memories, analyses and image studies from both operated and (semi-)automated cameras. Machines, humans and non-human entities are leaving and arriving, bearing witness to changing landscapes, seeking to extract (absolute) knowledge from it. Deconstructing both our (media-)technologically disturbed and our intrinsically connected relationship to landscapes, gel-[archive] #5 unfolds as an ambiguous chapter of history writing––between a technoid future and a nostalgic past, somewhere trapped within the cyclicality of time.

Located in the middle of the installation is a steel sculpture containing scientifically unused ice cores, still packed in plastic and pseudo-scientifically labeled by the artist: «protect me from what I want to know». This is only visible through the live feed through the lens of the camera placed above the sculpture connected to the screen underneath.

I. Snowfall on yellow weather protection at chairlift, Switzerland, 2022, digital colour image, HD 4:3, 1'44'', Janis Polar (2025)
II. Images with exposure errors from automatic cameras installed on the Allalin, Altels, Dam and Morteratsch glaciers, Switzerland, 1983–1994, 35mm colour slide film digitised, HD 4:3, 7'50", ETH Library Zurich, edited & animated by Janis Polar (2025)
III. Drilling with hot water in the glacier, Switzerland, 1995, VHS colour image digitised, HD 4:3, 1’22’’, VAW (Bernhard Etter, camera: Paula Gisler) / ETH Library Zurich, edited/cut by Janis Polar (2025)
IV. Tourists land by helicopter on the freshly hardened lava of the recently erupted Fagradalsfjall volcano, Iceland, 2022, digital colour image, HD 4:3, 7’23’’, Janis Polar (2025)
V. (a) Drilling with hot water in a glacier, Switzerland, 1995, digitised VHS colour image, 3’20’’, VAW (Bernhard Etter, camera: Paula Gisler) / ETH Library Zurich, edited/cut by Janis Polar (2025); (b) Glacier melt / underwater footage, Switzerland, 2020, digital colour image, HD 4:3, 3’20’’, Janis Polar (2025)
VI. Corvatsch: Glacier Drilling, Switzerland, 1987, digitised VHS colour image, HD 4:3, 6’15’’, VAW / ETH Library, edited/cut by Janis Polar (2025)
VII. Chamois passes Pers Glacier and notices me, Switzerland, 2020, digital colour image, HD 4:3, 2'17", Janis Polar (2025)
VIII. Mauvoisin Gietro Glacier: Model experiments. Avalanche descent into the reservoir. Investigation of wave formation and wave propagation in avalanches of varying intensity. Model Würenlos, Switzerland, 1968, 16mm black and white image (200 frames per second) digitised, HD 4:3, 10'29", VAW (Research Institute for Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology and Glaciology) / ETH Library Zurich, edited by Janis Polar (2025)
IX. Melted glacier water flows back into the obscure-looking Lenin Glacier, Kyrgyzstan, 2019, digital colour image, HD 4:3, 2'21'', Janis Polar (2025)

*gel-[archive] #5, 2025

9-channel video, recycled screens, live camera, steel sculpture, fragments of ice cores (Rhone Glacier, Andes, unknown), text *site-specific

Reference Loop I–III

Reference Loop IV–VI

Reference Loop VII-IX

mangan gardens, 2025

Alien vs. Predator, 2025

9-channel video, recycled screens, live camera, steel sculpture, fragments of ice cores (Rhone Glacier, Andes, unknown), text **site-specific*