multimedia installation (2020–2023)

with a sound work by Gerome Gadient

screens, used aluminum shelf, color video from different expeditions (2020–2023), ice in aquarium, used polyester glacier geotextiles, camera, live-video feed through macrolens, four-channel sound (looped 15’) *dimensions, duration variable

In glaciological research, ice cores are drilled in Antartica and stored to extract knowledge about past and present climates.  Meanwhile, in the Alps, glaciers have been protected by polyester geotextiles so they can continue to function as business and tourist attractions. Inherent in both practices are technocratic thoughts relating to ‹nature› and the ‹climate crisis›. In *gel-[archive] I collected images and artefacts from various expeditions into icy landscapes I made between 2020 and 2023—and arrange them into a growing archive that changes with each iteration. The work intends to investigate the duality of glaciers as natural archives with planetary intelligence—and the archiving of glaciers through different media and materialities. While one archive melts aways, the other one grows into energy hungry machine. The technoid, pseudo-scientific appearing installation imagines its own archiving process, through the fragments of moving images, used polyester geotextiles, technical (media) devices and artificially produced ice. *gel-[archive] is an ambiguous commentator, creating different feedback loops within the installation that highlight its (author’s) complicity: the technology fails to preserve while the archive is unable to perceive itself as a whole, kind of a cryptic «hyper-object» (Timothy Morton).

*gel- is the indorgermanic root of glacier, cold, freeze, frost