The broader line of inquiry takes as a starting point the first official Australian colonial currency to biomap at a molecular level the silver in these coins, through a linked series of landscapes-
from Spanish colonial silver mines in Latin America to a remote glacier in Peruvian Andes and on to a scientific research freezer facility in Copenhagen.
Breathe Like the Ice (Saturn’s Breath)
Production still from video documenting the performance. 2020/2021
More about the research: here
Flags bearing an image of an oversized galena crystal (lead/silver/zinc) representing the galena mined at Potosí, (the holey dollar silver source) were raised over the Quelccaya ice cap by Quecuan men from the region, in an act of recognition of the molecular level territorialisation.
These flags also act as standards to identify the emergent anthropogenic landscape- lead over ice, extraction over precipitation.
The Last Ice
Dual video with sound, 2020.
There’s a laboratory in an industrial part of Copenhagen that houses ice core samples collected by climatologists from glacial sites around the world. As the glaciers melt this is the last place that ice from these frozen landscapes will exist.
There is a glaciated icecap in the remote Peruvian Andes; Quelccaya. Pivotal to research into climate change embedded in its ice is pivotal information about the last ten thousand years of evolving climate, through air and dust trapped in the ice over 10 000 years.
The glacier is retreating due to atmospheric warming and is predicted to be gone within 50 years.
This dual video collapses the space between these connected sites. Drone footage traces the current margin of Quelccaya icecap, down the mountain to the point of the icecap’s margins at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and then further along a glacial valley carved by the glacier to its point of maximum extent 10 000 years ago.
Alongside this is a walk-through the ice core freezer facility; a library of boxed-up frozen water from disappearing sites.
The Sound of Wind Through the Crystaline Forest (Think Like a Mountain)
Still from interactive screen based video, 2020
Commissioned for CRISTAIS DO TEMPO/ TIME CRYSTALS, MMGerdau Museum, Brazil.
With thanks to Andrew Yipp
Propositionally past-casting a view of the site of Potosí silver mine (the largest silver mine in history), on the Cerro Rico mountain, Bolivia, minutes before silver was discovered in the 1500s. Amongst a grove of now-rare queñua trees (polylepis tarapacana) a grouping of flags depict a galena crystal, as found at Potosí. The mountain dreams of its future.
Breathe Like a Mountain
Still from interactive screen based video, 2020
Commissioned for CRISTAIS DO TEMPO/ TIME CRYSTALS, MMGerdau Museum, Brazil.
With thanks to Andrew Yipp
For more information see: Here
Working with data from Instituto Nacional de Investigación en Glaciares y Ecosistemas de Montaña, Peru.
The Quelccaya ice cap is exquisitely sensitive to air temperature. As the atmospheric temperature increases with global warming, the mountaintop receives less snow, falling instead as rain. It is predicted to be gone within 40 years.
This interactive work models the icecap’s appearance against atmospheric CO2 levels decade by decade, from the 1980s until the 2060’s, the last decade of its existence.
