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.

January 14 – March 22, 2020

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, 2^nd 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.