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    Against Time: Climate Calls from the Ice Archives

    Due to Bucknell’s temporary public closure related to COVID-19, this exhibition was closed on March 13, 2020.  

    Jan. 14 – March 22, 2020
    Campus Gallery

    Whale Bay Antarctica No. 4, 84 x 144 inches, soft pastel on paper, 2017. Courtesy of the artist Zaria Forman

    About:

    The artists in this exhibition bear witness to human history crashing into geological time. The exhibition features multimedia art by Peggy Weil, Zaria Forman, and Jessica Houston that weaves together science, symbols, and stories of climate change.

    Related Events:

    Due to Bucknell’s temporary public closure related to COVID-19, this event has been canceled.

    Fighting the Clock: A Frank Conversation about the Hot Button Topic of Climate Change
    Thursday, March 19, 6 p.m.
    Walls Lounge, 2nd Floor, Elaine Langone Center Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA

    What is climate change, and how is it affecting the planet?  What can the planets ice cores tell us about the future of humanity?  This discussion on the hot button topic of climate change will include Bucknell faculty members Amanda Wooden, and Andrew Stuhl, Penn State faculty member Richard Alley and artist Peggy Weil.  Bucknell University Sustainable Technology Program Director Milton Newberry will moderate.

    Curatorial Text: 

    Against Time: Climate Calls from the Ice Archives

    Human-created climate change is one of the existential issues of our time. It is also one of the most politically polarized issues, frustrating the search for collective solutions. Scientists at the heart of climate research have said that more data and facts are not enough to break through the ideological gridlock; that ethical, narrative and artistic perspectives are needed. Artists such as those in this exhibition answer that call and more; they offer the potential to reframe the social debate by pulling it into the realm of aesthetics.

    For example, these artists invoke the poles as symbolic sites of climate change. Their work asks us to consider how it changes our thinking when a global issue like climate change is widely represented by exotic and (for many) remote locales like the frozen arctic, Amazonian jungle, and ocean depths. These artists also address our perception of time as relevant to understanding the relationship between climate changes that occur in vast geological time and those taking place in the span of a single human lifetime. Weil’s 88 Cores leads us down through 110,000 years of ice history in a 4-hour video, and Forman similarly collapses the centuries it takes to form a glacier, the weeks it takes to draw that glacier, and the seconds it takes to represent that act in a time-lapse video.

    Aesthetics is a tool of classical philosophy that allows us to see things in new ways and to imagine better worlds. What better worlds might these artists help us to envision and – more – to create?

    Exhibited Works:

    Zaria Forman
    Whale Bay Antarctica No. 4, 2016
    Vinyl reproduction of an original
    pastel drawing
    Courtesy of the artist

    Zaria Forman
    Lindblad Cove, Antarctica, November 22, 2018, 2019
    Vinyl reproduction of an original pastel drawing
    Courtesy of the artist

    Zaria Forman
    Time Lapse of Whale Bay Antarctica No. 4, 2016
    video
    1:01 minutes
    Courtesy of the artist

    Zaria Forman
    Overview: 12 Miles of Lincoln Sea in the Arctic Ocean, North of Greenland, beginning at 80°53’33.86”N 59°18’18.37”W and moving South to 83° 42’41.77”N 59° 24’6.56”W on July 24th, 2014, 2018
    Video
    12:00 minutes
    NASA DMS Imaging
    Music by Aya Nishina
    Courtesy of the artist and Winston Wächter Fine Art

    Jessica Houston
    Melted Sea Ice, 2019
    Courtesy of the artist and
    Gallery Art Mûr

    Jessica Houston
    Glacier Water, 2019
    Courtesy of the artist and
    Gallery Art Mûr

    Jessica Houston
    Failed Scientific Instrument, 2019
    Courtesy of the artist and
    Gallery Art Mûr

    Jessica Houston
    Ice Coring Cable, 2019
    Courtesy of Richard Alley

    Jessica Houston
    Cold War Remnant, 2019
    Courtesy of the artist and
    Gallery Art Mûr

    Peggy Weil
    88 Cores, 2018
    Video
    4h29m
    Courtesy of the artist, original
    score by Celia Hollander Digital
    scans courtesy of NSF-ICF
    “Snowflakes fall to earth and leave a message.”
    -Pioneering Glaciologist Henri Bader (1907-1998)
    Ice cores are
    paleo-thermometers, their frozen data holding evidence of past local, regional and global climate. Over tens of thousands of years, seasonal snowfall is compressed into banded layers of ice. These bands can be counted and dated, like tree rings. Air bubbles trapped within the ice hold ancient air, providing an accounting of ancient atmosphere. This frozen history informs our heated future.
    This video pans through 88 meter-long segments from the GISP2D Ice Core drilled as part of the Greenland Ice Sheet Project between 1989 and 1993. The two-mile core is a time machine through 110,000 years of climate history.
    GISP2D Ice Core segment data courtesy of US National Science Foundation Ice Core Facility (NSF-ICF)

    Peggy Weil
    All Cores, 2018
    Photograph on paper
    Courtesy of the artist
    All Cores displays the individual
    cores from the video, 88 Cores. It
    was created as a working document, including file names, allowing the artist to reference the cores during the rendering process. It can be read as an index of the video; viewers can refer to the cores to read their depth and location within the video.

    Peggy Weil
    Ice Core Master Core Archive Diagram (1 of 2), 2017
    Laser Etched Plexiglas
    Courtesy of the artist

    Peggy Weil
    Ice Core Master Core Archive Diagram (2 of 2), 2017
    Laser Etched Plexiglas
    Courtesy of the artist

    Installation Images:

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