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Ice Watch

With Ice Watch, artist Olafur Eliasson and geologist Minik Rosing have made a visually striking, haptic contribution to the climate debate, on view at at Copenhagen’s City Hall Square.

One hundred tonnes of inland ice from Greenland melt on Copenhagen City Hall Square.

With Ice Watch, Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing direct attention to the publication of the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report on the Climate.

The ice, displayed in clock formation, is a physical wake-up call: Climate change is a fact. Temperatures are rising. The ice is melting. Sea levels are rising.

With Ice Watch, Eliasson and Rosing shared a message: “Today we have access to reliable data that shed light on what will happen and what can be done. Let’s appreciate this unique opportunity – we, the world, must and can act now. Let’s transform climate knowledge into climate action.”

“As an artist, I am interested in how we give knowledge a body. What does a thought feel like, and how can felt knowledge encourage action? Ice Watch makes the climate challenges we are facing tangible. I hope that people will touch the inland ice on City Hall Square and be touched by it. Perception and physical experience are cornerstones in art, and they may also function as tools for creating social change. We are all part of the ‘global we’; we must all work together to ensure a stable climate for future generations.” said Eliasson.

Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing, <i>Ice Watch</i>; Copehagen — Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing, *Ice Watch*, Copehagen

“Culture is a powerful ally in the struggle to effect change. Culture is almost always about turning knowledge into action. Unlike commercial communication, which sees its audience as consumers of goods and services, the cultural field is generous, based on a spirit of mutual trust; it invites people to be recipients and co-producers at the same time.

Art deals with the relationship between personal and shared experiences. A good work of art creates a community in which disagreement is welcome. Regardless of whether we agree or not about an artwork’s message or mode of expression, it is still something we experience together. A work of art can contribute to the creation of a sense of community or reciprocity, and it can motivate us to do something together, to become conscious and active members of a global we, without surrendering our personal, emotional experiences.

Art is the key, and science, the tool for ensuring humanity a wondrous future here on earth.” the duo wrote in the article “Ice, Art, and Being Human” first published in the Danish newspaper Politiken on Sunday, 26 October, 2014 (translation by Kevin McGwin)

Ice Watch was conceived to mark the publication of the Fifth Assessment Report of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the event, accompanying its publication, hosted in Copenhagen from 27 to 31 October 2014. The IPCC report is based on scientific research by a global community of scientists and contains assessments of knowledge about climate change and its consequences.