Ice Watch, made by Olafur Eliasson and Minik Rosing
A friend of mine recently come home after a long period in London and was so amazed by this installation. I made some research and now I'm writing this post to share awarness against Climate changing talking about this Public Art
Some data:
200-300 billion tonnes Greenland ice sheet loss per year
1.5 Celsius increase from pre-industrial temperature levels
7 metre rise of sea level if Greenland' s ice sheet melts
Every second, 10.000 blocks break off from the Greenland ice sheet. 30 of these are in London: 24 at the Tate Modern, and 6 outside Bloomberg' s European headquarters. By the time you read this lines, the 30 blocks will already have melted.
The temporary installation Ice Watch, a project by the artist Olafur Eliasson and the geologist Minik Rosing, has now reached it' s third installament, following the ones at Copenaghen (2014) and in Paris (2015).
The installation were all timed to coincide with important events dealing with climate changing.
In London it was held during the ghaterings of wolrd leaders at COP24 in Katowice, Poland( 2-14 December 2018), an annual United State conference.
Ice Watch is presented in public spaces because it is meant to help raise collective awarness of the phenomenon, as a driving force that shapes and encourages shared action.
To do this, Eliasson and Rosing literally scooped the blocks of ice that had already broken off and were drifting in the sea near Nuup Kangerlua Fjord.
They then put them in nine refrigerated containers and had them shipped from Denmark to UK, and so installed them at the two London sites to melt before the eyes of visitors and bystanders.