At the Moraine is multi-year, collaborative research project that studies the perception, mediation and representation of global climate change. The project is especially attuned to the ways that climate science has become a politically-charged domain of inquiry that includes practices of inhabiting, sampling, picturing and coexisting with geological phenomena such as melting glacier ice, geological sediment, and rare earth minerals.
A moraine is an accumulation of geological debris shaped and deposited by glaciers as they recede. We explore how the Greenland Ice Sheet, the Icefjord and its moraine conjoin a global network of Greenlandic knowledge and culture, climate science, contemporary artistic practices, and theories of political ecology, in the world’s largest Indigenous sovereign territory.
In June 2019, we held a site-specific workshop in Ilulissat, Greenland, a township of 4000 people. The workshop sought to challenge models of climate analysis rooted in colonial history and the global resource economy. Our gathering of scholars and artists addressed the moraine of the Ilulissat Icefjord as a nexus point where local, global and planetary concerns are mediated across diverse representational activities.
Organized by:
Amanda Boetzkes (University of Guelph) and Jeff Diamanti (University of Amsterdam)
Image: Jessie Kleemann, Arkhtikós Doloros, 2019. Performed for “At the Moraine: Envisioning the Concerns of Ice” workshop on June 19, 2019. Filmed by Chelsea Reid.
At the Moraine 