“ICE IS WATER IS ICE IS” by Ken Steen, Gene Gort, Megumi Masaki

Title:

ICE IS WATER IS ICE IS

Artist(s) and People Involved:

Performers:



• Ken Steen
• Gene Gort
• Megumi Masaki

Symposium:

• ISEA2022: 27th International Symposium on Electronic Art

Venue(s):

• CCCB: Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona , Barcelona , Spain

Artist Statement:

In considering various questions embodying the possible, we find resonance. “How to fight climate crisis and global warming?” Performance of this work serves as a time-based contemplation. It provides a space to consider how to slow, stabilize, or even reverse the effects of human behavior on climate conditions and the consequences. As the work represents shifting states of water and the language we use to name natural phenomena, we are asked to consider the interdependence of our actions to the conditions of nature as nature ourselves.
How might we relate with nature in order to transform our world so as to support continuance of its inhabitability? In relation to the witnessed realities of climate change, foregrounding “the possible unfinished real in front of us” as distinct from fostering ingrained doubt or disbelief, the work encourages the perception of current environmental challenges through rigorously focused consciousness, awareness, and iconography. Put more directly: if we don’t change we will perish; if we don’t pay attention, we’re doomed!

Considering our current circumstances,the possibleoffers an opportunity to cultivate an understanding of data-driven scientific approaches only if we sensitize ourselves to the consequences. Forced human migration, plant and animal displacement, extinction, and cultural collapse are realities we face. Data and persuasive writing may inspire intellectual engagement and artistic production, or else, at the other end of the spectrum, bring into question what many (most?) witness and experience to be normative.

The creation and performance of this work foregrounds both aesthetic and lived observation with an openness to experiential understanding. It attempts to untether us from strictly data-driven arguments, from stubborn political and contrarian opining, from self-defeating impossibility thinking, to a positive possible we can embrace.

Category:

• Performances
• Concert - Audio/Visual