Sympoietic Society - ICE * In Case of Emergency (2023)
A farewell to the disappearing glacier, a coming together, and a moment of collective reflection in a time of profound ecological uncertainty.
Sympoietic Society is a Pan-European group of artists and curators working on posthuman ecologies. In the summer of 2023 I joined them as their photographer for their residency in Austria titled I.C.E. * In Case Of Emergency.
The international art collective hosted an alpine art residency with workshops, performances, bonfire talks, lectures from art, culture, design and science as well as a panel discussion in the cultural space Ruine Blumenegg in Thüringerberg, Austria, in the course of the Walserherbst Festival from September 5–10. The art collective acknowledges the melting and disappearing of glaciers as an acute case of emergency. It calls for thinking beyond humans as the center of all beings.
I.C.E. culminated on September 9 in an art hike with a Glacier Ceremony to honor the existence of the dying Rote Wand glacier. Accompanied by a team of local mountain guides called Walser Guides and international volunteers, the Glacier Ceremony was held in a small circle directly on site at the Altitude Camp. After an initial minute of mourning, a farewell speech by local glaciologist Günther Groß was transmitted by radio from the Rote Wand ridge to the valley. The Walser Guides symbolically hoisted a burial shroud on the glacier's crevasse; the art collective scattered ashes from collected glacier stories from the Alps into the wind. The ceremony ended at the Rote Wand summit with the addition of a Glacier Register Book to the pre-existing summit book, to continuously document the extinction of the glacier.
The project was supported with funds from the state, the European Union LEADER programme and the Climate and Energy Fund of the KLAR programme.
