Event overview
Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson
‘When the extinction of a species is occurring or has occurred, it is neither appropriate nor enough, to close ranks and 'carry on regardless.'
Resident in Iceland, artists Snæbjörnsdóttir and Wilson’s ‘Visitations: Polar Bears out of Place’ is a three-year project funded by Rannís, the Icelandic Research Fund. In the context of sea-level rise, the work takes specific historic and contemporary polar bear arrivals to the coasts of Iceland as a point from which to consider more widely, issues of population displacement, hospitality and increasingly excited migration patterns. Approaching the subject from a contemporary art perspective, in a cross-disciplinary collaboration with folklorists, anthropologists and an international art curator, the project probes intimate and geo-political contact zones, between humans and others.
The artists will discuss Visitations in the context of recent research trips to Kaktovik in Alaska, widening the scope of Visitations and in their longstanding research relationship with Anchorage Museum, Alaska where they will have a solo exhibition in October 2020. Two other projects, Trout Fishing in America and Other stories (2014-15) and The Only Show in Town (2019) will add further insights, as both test ideological and practical tensions between conservationist, capitalist and consumerist interests. Trout Fishing in America and Other stories concerns manifest human-behavioural contradictions and environmental conflicts in the American Southwest, between conservation, tourism, native populations and game-hunting. The Only Show in Town (2019) a site-based project for Providence, USA, considers the witnessing of the extinction of an endangered bird species through habitat loss from sea-level rise.
Series co-organised by Wood Roberdeau & Lynn Turner with the support of the Critical Ecologies research stream
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Nov 2019 | 5:00pm - 7:00pm |
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