ABSTRACT
This chapter argues for the importance of the eco-visionary artists who engage with ice in the Hydrocene. These artists dramatically and deeply infiltrate the imagination of the climate crisis, a call made by artist Ursula Biemann. Rather than making work ‘about’ ice, the artists Roni Horn, Latai Taumoepeau, Yin Xiuzhen, Megan Cope, Emily Parsons-Lord, Katja Aglert, Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing work collaboratively and critically with ice to engender embodied encounters with this rapidly melting and unstable state of water. These artists actively co-produce with ice to form intimate art encounters. Unfreezing is the central hydro-artistic method of the ice chapter and tells the story of artists who use the act of melting ice to transpose materially focused climate narratives that deal with time, temporality and the severe alteration of environments. The chapter focuses on thinking with ice as a rich material for coming closer to the climate crisis and expanding the discourse of climate realities and imaginaries.
