anthropoScene IX : Solastalgia
anthropoScene IX : Solastalgia, 2023, Video
A dying mountain glacier; its body shrouded to stem the loss of ice. Yet the melt continues. The humans have tried to insulate it, but might the treatment be worse than the illness? On the opposite side of the valley a steam train, icon of the fossil-fuelled Industrial Revolution, passes through a landscape that was filled with this glacier’s ice a mere century ago.
Artist Statement: “Solastalgia” is Australian environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht’s term describing the paradox of feeling alienated or distressed in familiar surroundings — due to environmental destruction, such as that caused by climate change. I filmed this work one far-too-hot day in Summer 2022, when Swiss glaciers lost 6% of their mass; the largest melt ever recorded.
