{"id":417,"date":"2016-11-15T17:45:56","date_gmt":"2016-11-15T17:45:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arcticincontext.com\/?p=417"},"modified":"2021-07-30T23:17:42","modified_gmt":"2021-07-30T23:17:42","slug":"performing-ice-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/2016\/11\/15\/performing-ice-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Performing \u2018Ice Watch\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last December, the team at Studio Olafur Eliasson<\/a> brought nearly 90 U.S. tons\u2019 worth of glacial ice from coastal Greenland to Paris. While politicians, bureaucrats, civil society representatives, and more debated global responses to climate change at COP21, the U.N.\u2019s annual climate change conference, the 12 blocks of ice, arranged in a clock formation, melted<\/a> in Place du Panth\u00e9on.<\/p>\n

Nearly a year later, the agreement reached at the Paris summit has at last come into force and policymakers and activists alike are reconvening in Marrakech, Morocco for COP22, the 2016 conference. To celebrate the enacting of the Paris agreement, an important step in the global effort to confront the devastating effects of climate change, Studio Olafur Eliasson released new films shot during the Ice Watch installation. The video below, \u201cEncounters with Ice Watch,\u201d features dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet and Wayne McGregors Company interacting with the artwork.<\/p>\n

Encounters with Ice Watch, Place du Panth\u00e9on, Paris, 2015<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

World Policy Journal<\/em> spoke with Anna Engberg-Pedersen, head of research and communications at Studio Olafur Eliasson and an integral part of bringing the Ice Watch project to fruition, to discuss the role of art in addressing the complexities of global warming and its environmental and economic challenges.<\/p>\n

World Policy Journal:<\/strong> What has the response to Ice Watch been since the installation in Paris last year?<\/p>\n

Anna Engberg-Pedersen:<\/strong> Overwhelming, actually. We were very touched by\u00a0people\u2019s\u00a0response\u00a0to the project\u00a0and\u00a0by\u00a0the broad reach\u00a0it is having. To take\u00a0art into the street is nothing new, but\u00a0there are good reasons to continue doing so. A public square offers a\u00a0unique, shared\u00a0space where politicians, city planners, art lovers, tourists, students, and local residents can meet\u00a0and\u00a0interact in\u00a0an\u00a0unscripted situation. And\u00a0Ice Watch continues to resonate\u00a0in public awareness, as\u00a0we\u00a0find\u00a0in our conversations with policy makers and climate activists,\u00a0with\u00a0cultural workers and researchers.<\/p>\n

WPJ: <\/strong>In our conversation last year with Minik Thorleif Rosing, he brought up the ability of art to evoke emotion that pure science cannot. What types of emotional responses did Ice Watch prompt regarding the effects of climate change?<\/p>\n

AEP:<\/strong> There was surprise:\u00a0What? Ice blocks here, at the heart of Paris?<\/em> Wonder:\u00a0How is this possible? What lies behind\u00a0this? Who did this? Why?<\/em> The feeling of urgency:\u00a0Wow, it\u2019s melting<\/em>\u2014fast!<\/em> And the knowledge of being touched on a physical level:\u00a0This is real. I can feel it. It\u2019s about me, too. People’s abstract knowledge about climate change became a felt experience.<\/p>\n

WPJ:<\/strong> What is the intended message, or messages, of the dance accompanying Ice Watch? Was this performance always part of the initial conception of the project?<\/p>\n

AEP: <\/strong>The dance event was quite spontaneous. Shortly before the inauguration of Ice Watch,\u00a0we learned that Wayne McGregor\u2014a good friend of Olafur\u2019s with whom he did the Tree of Codes contemporary ballet\u2014was in town with some of his key dancers, including, among others, Marie-Agn\u00e8s Gillot and J\u00e9r\u00e9mie B\u00e9lingard,\u00a0\u00e9toiles<\/em>\u00a0at the Paris Opera Ballet. An encounter between the ice and the dancers seemed\u00a0like\u00a0the thing\u00a0<\/em>to pull together. The\u00a0dancers turned up just before midnight, after\u00a0the premiere of\u00a0their ballet at the Garnier Opera, on the very day that we launched the project on site.<\/p>\n

The dance became a dialogue between nature and\u00a0human beings. The dancers have fantastic skill\u00a0in\u00a0going beyond their own individual\u00a0bodies, moving in and out of patterns,\u00a0dialoguing\u00a0both with each other and with the ice in a non-hierarchical, non-polarized way. It was very inspiring to watch.\u00a0Their way of moving\u00a0took the presence of the ice seriously,\u00a0acknowledged it, and accepted it.\u00a0These\u00a0movements\u00a0in turn inspired\u00a0the choreographic decisions\u00a0Olafur made\u00a0on the spot\u00a0while our studio team was filming.<\/p>\n

WPJ:<\/strong> The entire project was performative, from the act of gathering glacial ice to the interactions of people who came across it. How does the aspect of performance tie into the activism it is both a part of and intended to inspire?<\/p>\n

AEP:<\/strong> To move ice blocks is a big endeavour, but then, we\u2019re used to trying to\u2014quoting Olafur\u2014\u201cmake the impossible possible\u201d at the studio. We need to inspire people to see that a balanced climate is\u00a0still\u00a0within reach if we act\u2014and act together\u2014now. Creativity and activism\u00a0combined\u00a0can go a long way. Art is\u00a0a powerful language,\u00a0at once\u00a0both\u00a0soft and fierce, with\u00a0which to address the global issues of today.<\/p>\n

WPJ:<\/strong> Greenland\u2014where the ice was harvested\u2014is now promoting development of its oil, gas, and mineral resources, a move that will benefit its economy and facilitate autonomy from Denmark but will also contribute to the climate change that Ice Watch is meant to address. Is there a role for artwork like that which Studio Olafur Eliasson produces to address the complexities of competing imperatives like economic need and environmental concerns?<\/p>\n

AEP:<\/strong> Complexity is being challenged these days. As we\u2019ve experienced rather acutely recently, facts are losing status. Everything has to be simple, digestible. Emotions rule. At Olafur\u2019s studio, we have\u00a0worked\u00a0with emotions for a long time. Never\u00a0in a populist\u00a0kind of way, obviously, but rather by working with our\u00a0awareness of\u00a0ourselves, of our\u00a0perceptual apparatus, of\u00a0our\u00a0modes of orientation, of\u00a0how social interaction shapes the spaces we inhabit.\u00a0Working with\u00a0compassion, while recognizing and appreciating\u00a0our\u00a0differences as well as\u00a0the\u00a0values and\u00a0aspects of the\u00a0human\u00a0condition that we all share.<\/p>\n

Olafur often responds\u00a0to\u00a0this or that question or challenge\u00a0by saying: \u201cWell, I think it\u2019s a little more complex than\u00a0that.\u201d\u00a0We\u2019re not trying to offer simple messages packaged for swift and easy consumption. We want to bring the complexity of the world, of human life, to people. Rather than dissect the entanglement of economic planning and environmental care, we try to address that complexity in a quite subtle manner. Art and\u00a0dance can open\u00a0us\u00a0to registers of sensing\u00a0and\u00a0thinking about the world that are often eclipsed in everyday life. We have to be able to access these spaces\u00a0deep\u00a0within ourselves in order to\u00a0reflect\u00a0and navigate the highly complex world of today.<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

*****<\/p>\n

Click for more videos<\/a> from Studio Olafur Eliasson.<\/em><\/p>\n

[Photo courtesy of Studio Olafur Eliasson<\/a>]<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on the World Policy Institute website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last December, the team at Studio Olafur Eliasson brought nearly 90 U.S. tons\u2019 worth of glacial ice from coastal Greenland to Paris. While politicians, bureaucrats, civil society representatives, and more debated global responses to climate change at COP21, the U.N.\u2019s annual climate change conference, the 12 blocks of ice, arranged in a clock formation, melted<\/p>\n

Read more<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":418,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,10],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-culture-society","tag-environmental-issues"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1717,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/1717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jsis.washington.edu\/aic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}