Bergen Centre for Electronic Arts

BEK is proud to present the Norwegian premiere of Susan Schuppli’s essay film Moving Ice. The film will be screened at Cinemateket in Bergen on 21 May and at Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo on 22 May. Both screenings will be followed by a conversation between Schuppli and Åse Løvgren.

Screening times and tickets:
21 May, 18:00 – Cinemateket i Bergen, tickets here.
22 May, 18:00 – Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, tickets here. 

Moving Ice

Written & directed by Susan Schuppli, 4K colour & sound, 48 mins, 2024

Ice has always moved, but is now moving faster than ever, as anthropogenic factors accelerate climatic changes. The Earth is burning up, and ice is on the move. However, in the early 1800s colonialism and capitalism had already joined forces to move ice. Not as an unforeseen consequence of industrialization – which we now recognise as a key accelerator of atmospheric warming – but as a commodity in and of itself. This came to be known as the “frozen water trade”, a trans-hemispheric commerce in natural ice that moved its crystal cargo along the well-established shipping routes of plantation economies and the spice trade.

This film tells the story of how European and American merchants tried to cool the tropics through the financialisation of temperature, shipping natural ice extracted from glaciers and winter lakes to colonial elites around the world.

Moving Ice collects stories of the frozen water trade in places like Folgefonna and Svartisen in Norway, the US and India, and it looks at traces from the historical ice trade together with contemporary practices with ice.

Susan Schuppli in conversation with Åse Løvgren

Following the screening, Schuppli will be joined by the artist and project developer at BEK, Åse Løvgren, for a conversation about the research into the “ice archives”. Throughout the last few years Schuppli has been cooperating with Løvgren and BEK on several projects. In 2022 she held the workshop Landscape as Material Witness at BEK, on how the Earth can be understood as a sensor, where events and processes leave traces in the landscape. For BEK’s symposium in 2022 Schuppli produced her vinyl release Ice Records, that dealt with the consequences of melting glaciers and ice masses, and how information about the Earth’s climate history disappears as ancient air bubbles are released from the ice they have been encased in. Schuppli gathered material from her meetings with scientists, ecologists, activists, local communities and folk singers on the record. In autumn 2023, Åse Løvgren and drone photographer Thomas Bugaj filmed the Folgefonna glacier and the surrounding landscape for Schuppli’s new film.

Moving Ice is commissioned by BEK and Sonic Acts. The world premiere took place in Eye Filmmuseum as part of Sonic Acts Biennial 2024. Moving Ice is part of New Perspectives for Action, a project by Re-Imagine Europe, co-funded by the European Union. The project is supported by Arts Council Norway and the artistic research project Illuminating the Non-Representable, at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen.

The screening in Bergen is presented in collaboration with Cinemateket i Bergen, and the screening in Oslo in collaboration with Kunstnernes Hus.

Susan Schuppli

Susan Schuppli is a researcher and artist based in the UK whose work examines material evidence from war and conflict to environmental disasters and climate change. Current work is focused on learning from ice and the politics of cold. Creative projects have been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, Canada, and the US. She has published widely within the context of media and politics and is author of the book, Material Witness published by MIT Press in 2020. Schuppli is Professor and Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London where she is also an affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Forensic Architecture.

Åse Løvgren

Åse Løvgren is a visual artist and works as a project developer at BEK. Her practice examines how geopolitical connections leave material, historical and political traces in her immediate local landscape. Using these as prisms, she looks at how they connect to an international economy that involves natural destruction and social inequality.

Accessibility

Cinemateket has space for wheelchairs on the first seat row. Please contact post@cinemateketbergen.no before purchasing a ticket requiring a wheelchair spot. Kunstnernes Hus Cinema has space for a wheelchair in front of the first seat row. After purchasing a ticket, please contact post@kunstnerneshus.no to save a spot.

Images: 1-5) Still from “Moving Ice” (2024), Susan Schuppli, 4K Video, courtesy of the artist. 6) Susan Schuppli in Svalbard. Courtesy of the artist.