Editor’s thoughts

In Owning the Fractures, Planetary Intimacies delves into the poignant narrative of disappearing landscapes and the human role in their alteration. There, we are compelled to confront the accelerated pace of geological transformation, where epochs of change unfold within the span of a human lifetime. As geological time converges with human experience, Planetary Intimacies raises deep questions about our capacity to comprehend and adapt to this shifting paradigm, inviting us to embrace a state of interconnected vulnerability.

What inspired you to explore glacier cracks as the subject matter for
your artistic series?

Planetary Intimacies: In my approach to painting, I was initially looking for a correspondence between my inner and outer landscapes. I had originally planned to paint the black and green deserts of Iceland. But when I went there for the first time, I realized that it wasn’t the deserts that fascinated me, but the glaciers. In the beginning, I stretched canvases vertically in the landscape and entered into a dialogue with the landscape. This phase lasted about 2-3 years. But during this time I began to reflect critically on my artistic practice. I asked myself whether my approach was appropriate to the present time.

It is inevitable that when I paint landscapes, I follow a tradition that is not without its problems. Whether I like it or not, I am continuing this tradition and also carrying the conventions associated with it. So I asked myself what my painting could look like if I considered these thoughts and began various experiments. On the one hand, I often transformed the canvas material into other forms, from a kite to a tent. On the other hand, I began experiments where I shared authorship with the landscape. In this case, my focus was on the cracks and fractures in the glaciers.

My series of glacier crack frottages is an artistic exploration of something that will soon be gone. The changing shape of the cracks draws boundaries between something that is lost and something new, something that is just emerging, while we are inextricably caught in between. Appropriating landscape through tourism, sport, photography or other artistic practices also means owning the fractures of it. What can it mean to take responsibility for a fracture on an environmental and social level?

Your description of the backpack as a tool for exploration and discovery evokes a sense of both intensity and solitude. Could you delve deeper into the process behind this series?

Planetary Intimacies: During my hikes on various glaciers, I learned how to move on the ice.
Traveling alone, I had to carefully follow the constant changes in the weather and the glacier itself while adapting my perception step by step toward these new circumstances.

The idea of something barely perceptible lurking in the elusive in-between states is explained by Marcel Duchamp in his concept of inframince. It describes the experience of fleeting traces – for example, the latent warmth of a subway seat that you can still feel even though the person who sat there before you has already gone away.

The series of Glacier Frottages explores the idea of inframince. They trace a form of perception that goes beyond visual capture. We add knowledge to what we see and thereby add meaning to what we see. A meaning that is invisible, but closely connected to it. What does a trace mean in our present? And what is the opposite of a trace?

Could you provide more insight into the materials you utilized throughout this series?

Planetary Intimacies: For this series, I only used cotton fabrics. I stretched them over the cracks and rubbed them with a paint roller and ink. The volcanic ash and sediment on the ice additionally color the cotton.

Based on a question you have been asking yourself for a long time, how do you make your research process tangible in your finished work?

Planetary Intimacies: I don’t have a simple answer to it, rather, I have to answer it case-by-case. To stay with the example of the crack frottages. I’ve realized that when I present the series on a website, for example, it’s important for me to show the process and the place of creation. In a live exhibition situation, however, it is almost the opposite for me. Here, the materiality of the frottages develops its own effect and aesthetic power and allows access via the material. You can see the adhesions of the ash and the traces that the melting ice leaves behind in the ink. In this case, I wouldn’t want to put the pictures in competition with each other. That would be too didactic for me and would stand in the way of a full aesthetic experience.

Your statement alludes to a symbolic interpretation of glacier cracks
as delineating the boundaries between the past and the future. Can you
expand on this metaphor and its significance within your artistic
practice?

Planetary Intimacies: The cracks can be seen as a symbol of the change that is taking place. Changes that used to take hundreds of thousands of years will now take a hundred years. Geological time is now shifting on a human scale. Are we capable of understanding this? I don’t know, but I’m interested in the state of implicit anticipation. A state in which an all-encompassing connectedness and vulnerability enter our consciousness.

Planetary Intimacies: I would like to explore this shift in temporalities and also the spheres of influence in a follow-up to this project this summer. The project has received funding from Wissenschaft im Dialog. With their support in an interactive format, parts of the frottages will be placed in a time capsule in a crevasse in the Alps. Depending on how fast the glacier melts, the time capsule will reappear. The impossibility of getting to the capsule at first, but the certainty that the capsule itself will re-emerge, challenges our view of something as monumental and fragile as a glacier. This will be a participatory action in which you can take part both at the exhibition and online at www.planetary-intimacies.com.

Interview with Planetary Intimacies by Rita Trindade