Artist, videographer, researcher, and author Susan Schuppli is interested in the capacity of objects to be both agents and custodians of traumatic or violent events, such as war, climate crisis, and ecological disaster. Through a transdisciplinary approach based on an alliance of scientific and Indigenous expertise and the collaboration of local communities, Schuppli sheds light on the agency of these non-living actors \u2014 objects, technologies, natural resources \u2014 to shape the framework of historical discourse. Proposed as material archives in her documentaries, these \u201cpassive\u201d witnesses encourage serious critical reflection on contemporary existence by making tangible the consequences of otherwise abstract politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning from Ice<\/em> (since 2019) is a vast research-creation project that extends over several territories: the Canadian Arctic, the Svalbard Archipelago in Norway, and the Hindi Kush Himalayas. Taking ice as witness and discursive agent capable of modifying the pernicious manipulation of the environment by humans, Learning from Ice<\/em> lays bare the methodologies and knowledge surrounding materials. The project embraces elements both formal \u2014 photographs, videos, installations\u2014and theoretical, in the form of sem- inars and research workshops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ice Cores<\/em>, the first documentary in the series, depicts the collection, analysis, and archiving of ice cores, rendering visible\u2014and palpable\u2014what Schuppli calls \u201cthe politics of cold.\u201d Her objective is to make space for geological knowl- edge as a means to subvert the hierarchical relationships between a subject of knowledge and an object of learning. Literally marked by the imprint of colonial extractivist capitalism, the ice core samples, stratified by varied concentrations of sedimented pollutants, attest, in turn, to the use of lead smelters by the Romans, industrialization, or global warming. A material of remembrance par excellence due to its pinpoint precision, ice, here, becomes an eloquent witness to the consumerist politics that threaten the North, the ultimate bastion of our most innocent and melancholic fantasies. With Learning from Ice<\/em>, Schuppli restores the truncated agency of the Arctic and Himalayan deserts by reinvigorating the snow, glaciers, and seracs with a very real material and political presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Translated from French by Louise Ashcroft<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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