LEARNING FROM ICE: Ice Cores

LEARNING FROM ICE is a multi-year artistic project researching the ways in which different knowledge practices are investigating and responding to changes taking place within the Circumpolar North under the accelerated conditions of global warming. It is comprised of a series of documentary films exploring ice core science, sea ice, and glaciers, as well as a field school in collaboration with Nunavut Arctic College around the climate change concerns of Inuit youth, and an ice law forum on the right to be cold at the University of Toronto. Ice Cores (REF Submission). To-date this research has unfolded with filmed interviews and site visits to geochemistry labs and national ice core repositories in Canada and the US as well as fieldwork in the Columbia Icefields. From industrial black carbon deposits, atmospheric nuclear testing, to greenhouse gases resulting from the combustion of fossil fuels, glacial ice sheets have been systematically ‘recording’ evidence of these planetary processes. This archival condition has enabled me to link the worlds of Earth Science with the Humanities both of which share an interest in the material records of the past. In addition to answering scientific questions, ice cores are increasingly being used to track societal and cultural changes such as the effectiveness of environmental policies, epidemiological data linked the Black Death and even the imperial expansion of the Romans, which corresponds to lead pollution within the ice matrix. All of this is explored within the documentary. My primary objectives in making the film were to translate and narrate the complexities of ice core science to non-specialists in various public forums (institutions, schools, galleries). Commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway, the film is actively being exhibited and screened in Canada, the US and Scandinavia