Materiality of Time: Polar Ice as a Medium for Ecological Art for the Tempered Zones

The Polar regions and their ice have been the symbol of global warming not only since the icon of the Polar bear on the melting floe. Concurrently, the eternal ice has been a central motif of sublimity since the nineteenth century. Starting from an elementary perspective on the medium of ice and the notion of ice as a real-time system, as formulated by artist Hans Haacke in the 1960s, this chapter critically examines various works of art from the last 20 years that make use of Polar ice. Already in 2001, the artist David Buckland founded the initiative Cape Farewell, which sent artists on research ships to the Polar regions, so that they would bring their impressions from there back to the temperate-zone museums. In terms of an ecologically motivated aesthetic, the artworks allow one to delve into what the medium of ice allows to sensualise and imagine, but also to problematise the fragile aesthetics and artistic modes of sublimity in times of global warming. Examples will include artworks by Hans Haacke, David Buckland, Julian Charrière, Katie Paterson and Mathias Kessler, among others, and the Antarctic Biennale.