RECORDS OF LOSS – IMAGES OF A GLACIER

2019–2020

The case study for DISTURBED HARMONIES [ANTHROPOCENE LANDSCAPES] focuses on the visual history of a glacier, Alpine explorations, and the heritage of Enlightenment.

Axel Braun, Lake Sandur with a view towards mount Johannisberg, 2019
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Axel Braun, Ice front of Pasterze [Structure from Motion], loop-edit, 00:30:00, FullHD, 2019
animation based on: Bernhard GRASEMANN, Martin SCHÖPFER, Franziska MAYRHOFER, Geological Records of a Dying Glacier, Department of Geodynamics and Sedimentology, University of Vienna, 2017

The case study retraces the history of Pasterze through images and quotations. Austria’s largest glacier is a prominent example for the threatened cryosphere of the Alps.

The spirit of Enlightenment sparked humanity‘s fascination for remote and previously avoided territories. The same worldview promoted the exploitation of human and natural resources on a global scale. Its unintended side effects have meanwhile caused the disappearance of various natural phenomena. Glaciers provide an outstanding example for this ambiguity: having become the subject of scientific interest not even 250 years ago, they will soon have vanished from most parts of the Earth – long before scientists can unlock their prevailing secrets.

The visual history of Pasterze illustrates these simultaneous processes of appropriation and vanishment. Visual representations have served humans to better understand and orientate within unknown and hostile environments to gradually take hold of them and eventually exploit and consume them. Meanwhile, most images of Pasterze became records of loss.

The project started as a collaboration with the Vienna Anthropocene Network of the University of Vienna. It contributed to the „Vanishing Ice“ workshop at the Naturhistorisches Museum and the University of Vienna in January 2020. The final presentation was a mixed-media installation at Kunst Haus Wien – Museum Hundertwasser in the same year.

Installation view (detail)
“Garage” of Kunst Haus Wien – Museum Hundertwasser, Vienna, an outpost to the group show NACH UNS DIE SINTFLUT (After us, the Flood), 2020, September 16 – 2021, February 14
1/3 Installation views
“Garage” of Kunst Haus Wien – Museum Hundertwasser, Vienna, an outpost to the group show NACH UNS DIE SINTFLUT (After us, the Flood), 2020, September 16 – 2021, February 14
Axel Braun, Glacial Stream with a view towards Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, 2019
Axel Braun, Lake Sandur with a view towards the Elisabeth rock, 2019
Axel Braun, Margaritzenstausee, 2019

The glacier front of Pasterze covered the rock below the dam walls when the glacier reached its Little Ice Age Maximum around 1848. Meanwhile, it has retreated for approximately 2km.
Pieces of 6000-year-old Swiss pine wood that the retreating glacier has revealed.
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Axel Braun, Pasterze (Ablation and Accumulation Zone), 2019, 00:05:58, FullHD; sound: Roberto FABBRICIANI, Pasterze, from the album “Glaciers in Extinction”, col legno, 2007 (excerpt)

Installation view (detail)
Axel Braun, Pasterze [1863/2019]
Reenactments of photographs by Gustav Jägermayer
FullHD
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Axel Braun, Kaiser-Franz-Josefs-Höhe, 2019, 00:00:31, FullHD