Susan Schuppli: Ice Records
Published
During the symposium, the artist and researcher Susan Schuppli presents a newly created project, Ice Records – a sonic exploration of the climate records captured in ice sheets and glaciers. The project takes the form of a listening session, a text work, an LP, and a lecture.
Talk
Time: 12 November at 13:30
Venue: Østre, Østre Skostredet 3
Available at Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/773743114
As glaciers melt and ice sheets retreat, information about the Earth’s climate histories is also vanishing as ancient air bubbles captured in ice are released. The atmospheric archive recorded by glaciers and ice sheets provides unequivocal evidence of increased greenhouse gas emissions and thus global warming. Every recording is a consequence of the moisture content, air pressure, and temperature that combine to modify the properties of sound waves as they travel through a medium. The sounds of ice are, in effect, an acoustic archive of multiple temporalities and environmental histories. This “record” and vinyl pressing gathers together material from Schuppli’s encounters with scientists, ecologists, activists, communities, and folk singers. From field recordings captured at glacial sites by researchers in Canada, Svalbard, Norway, and India to a Ladakhi folk song about mountains, rivers, and streams, these tracks take listeners into the sonic worlds of ice. The sound work will be presented in a public listening session at Østre on Saturday 12 November at 11:00.
Susan Schuppli
Susan Schuppli’s work explores the ways in which non-human witnesses, such as materials and objects, enter into public discourse and testify to historical events, especially those involving political violence, ethnic conflict, and war crimes. This research resulted in the monograph Material Witness: Media, Forensics, Evidence, published by MIT Press in 2020. Her current research and artistic production expands these legal investigations to examine how environmental systems and the transformations brought about by global warming are also generating new forms of evidence; creating, in effect, a planetary archive of material witnesses. Schuppli’s artistic work has been exhibited throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. She is Director of the Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths University of London and is an affiliate artist-researcher and Board Chair of Goldsmith’s multidisciplinary research group Forensic Architecture.
Photo credits: Photos from the Ice Records LP insert courtesy of Susan Schuppli.