Image: © Broomberg & Chanarin, Switzerland, 2016
Taking inspiration from Paul Auster’s tale of a mountain explorer found preserved in ice Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin began to look at recovered objects that had been ‘rejected’ by receding glaciers. Exploring the notion of the glacier as a form of memory bank. The process was an ‘excavation of chance’: documenting preserved artefacts that have been revealed naturally as the glaciers diminish. Initial research has found that glacial archaeology is, in the wake of climate change, uncovering artefacts at an unprecedented rate. This is happening around the world but in the Swiss alps there are teams dedicated to excavating remains and documenting the archeological finds so it was a perfect place to commence this project.
“We treated the glaciers as an archive which as a result of global warming are suddenly revealing artefacts that have for millennia been perfectly preserved in the stable, frozen mass. The objects reveal remarkable and intimate details of individual lives lived long ago but they also speak about the end of the fucking world in the very near future.”
See their work and more @ the When Records Melt exhibition Westergasfabriek, Unseen Amsterdam 21-23 of September.