In 2013 a visual artist Stefano Cagol asked me to participate in 'The Ice Monolith'. Cagol was invited to make a show at the Maldives Pavilion during the 55th International Art Exhibition - la Biennale di Venezia.
His main idea was to bring a monolith of ice from the Alps (where he comes from) to Venice and... allow it to melt in the summer sunshine in the public space of that incredible city. That 'kubrickian metaphor', like he described it, aimed to remind us that our activities in this world can start processes which are hard or even impossible to stop and inevitably lead to changes in our lives. The retreat of glaciers is a visible sign of the rise in global temperatures since the last decades of the 19th century. The predicted global sea level rise means, among others, a total disappearing in the not-so-distant-future of some areas of the world. Both Venice and the Maldives are on that list... Stefano decided to invite 34 people, art curators and researchers, and ask all of them these three simple questions: 1. How not to disappear? 2. What is affecting the Earth? 3. How does art influence society? I had a pleasure to be one of the invited people and you can find my answers in the publication which online version is available here. |