Ça raconte des histoires de fractures, d’Hommes, de frontières, une poussière qui ne retombe pas.
Et le refus de voir fondre le monde. 
Vanessa Bell

Impetuous, we sought to tame the infinite, to dominate time, to shape space to our image, to control the climate.

Our glaciers are disappearing. Their imminent end threatens the balance of the Earth system as we know it and our lives. New Climate Regimes are taking hold. Rather than leading us to slow down, to adopt the long timeframe of glaciers, these New Climate Regimes have introduced a strange hope: the exploitation of hitherto inaccessible resources and new commercial opportunities offered by technosolutionism.

The event horizon marks the immaterial boundary at the entrance to the black hole. It would therefore be this "physical limit" that must not be crossed if we are not to disappear. It's only a short step from there to extending it to other physical limits, our planetary limits, as the horizon seems to be made up of these tipping points that fall one after the other at the speed of light.

In his exhibition, artist & éleveur d’icebergs Barthélemy Antoine-Lœff presents a body of work that acts as a narrative to alert us to the current situation and to try to grasp the event horizon.

Curated by Mathieu Vabre

Stereolux
Barthélemy Antoine-Loeff

The installation Tipping Point is a sensitive and poetic tribute to those dying glaciers. It stages the (re)birth of an artificial glacier protected by a dome; a drip is feeding the glacier that will grow during the exhibition. The device invites the viewer to attend the birth of this artificial glacier. It is inspired by the “ice stupas” invented by the engineer Sonam Wangchuk and used to fight against water shortages during the summer in Ladakh (IN).

Between a laboratory experiment, an attempt to repair the climate or an ironic collector’s item, the installation confronts us with time and scales; 10.000 years ago, the stabilisation of our cryosphere coincided with the first human traces we found in Mesopotamia, while the fist glaciers are disappearing in 70 years under the pressure of the human activity.

With the support of Maif Social Club and the invaluable assistance of Chroniques, Mod'Verre, and Réso-nance numérique.

"Ce qui disparait se transforme immédiatement en éternité" explores the multiple questions of climate repair and technosolutionism using artificial intelligence. 

The installation stages a fictional laboratory for measuring the melting of symbolic mini icebergs which are generated in ice before being placed in an analysis cell with the aim of finding the ultimate iceberg: the one which, by its shape, will make a consensus, which one will take the longest to melt, based on the analyses of the icebergs previously generated.

The installation uses a genetic algorithm specially developed to try to solve this problem of climatic optimisation...
Obviously, the starting postulate is absurd, and ironic. Just like the idea of ​​imagining being able to "repair" the climate by artificially prolonging the life of icebergs with the help of a genetic algorithm.

Production: PUZZLE, Tiers-lieu Thionvillois

A frozen safe, Antarctica constitutes the largest reserve of fresh water on the planet, accounting for approximately 90%. Its ground is rich, and about 20% of the world's reserves of oil, gas, and minerals are believed to be buried there.

Officially, a neutral and demilitarised territory, reserved for scientific study, Antarctica is a terra nullius, belonging to no one. The Antarctic Treaty rules out any possibility of exploiting natural resources until 2048. Unofficially, some scientific bases serve as flags for states to claim a part of the continent.

In 2012, under the guise of scientific research, the Russians drilled up to 3,768 meters to test hydrocarbon extraction technologies in polar environments. The Chinese mapped the continent's resources.

The installation Manufacture Poétique d’Icebergs Artificiels represents the map of the Antarctic continent, divided into 350 iceberg units. Audiences are invited to rearrange these units into a new, artificial topography of the territory. This staging becomes the play-support to explore future challenges related to the white continent, blending geopolitical fiction and geostrategic projection.

Production: Les Usines, La filature Ligugé 
Creation produced in collaboration with the platform Chroniques - Région Sud. 
With the support of the European Program Risk Change and the Chateau éphémère.

The iceberg unit is a fictional unit that fits in a child's hand and measures the cryosphere and its disappearance. These units - which could be described as pixels or satellite tiles - evoke the division of resources into geo-strategic parcels. And they raise questions about geo-political borders and fractures.

By ironically reusing the codes of projections used in industrial drawings, these prints weave several narrative threads that echo our immediate present and future.

Created in the context of the CONTOURS micro-residency with the support of Littérature québécoise mobile

On the border between Mars and Earth, between the present and a fantasised future, the installation questions both the habitability of our planet and the colonisation of a new one.

A virtual loop crosses climates: the transplantation of the phenomenon of storms observed on the surface of Mars plunges the user into a potentially undesirable terrestrial climate. 

Is this still fiction, given that we have collided with the Earth's climate and altered its trajectory?

Or is it a reality that bears witness to actions to rehabilitate our climate by making it sustainably liveable, or to investments to terraform a planet and relocate humanity? 

Could we have created our own meteors?

Production Executive: BKE
Production: Siana l'imaginaire des technologies, as part of the residence "Nos Météores, Fictions Atmosphériques" by Barthélemy Antoine-Lœff and Marie-Julie Bourgeois funded by the Île-de-France Region

Barthélemy Antoine-Lœff (°1982) is a visual artist whose creations of optical and digital artworks, sometimes interactive, often immersive, express dreamlike worlds crossed by a contemplative and ecological relationship of nature and elements. The artist creates spaces for sharing his feelings about the "forces" of the world: dreams, energies, materials, technologies. Refusing to place himself in the field of the Kantian sublime, he positions himself at the place of wonder and infantile craze, as if to claim the part of the dream that we develop as a child and which remains forever our "desiring motor" throughout our life. Resolutely focused on ecological questions, his current research leads him to question the irony behind the profitability of repairing the climate, the disappearance of the cryosphere and its impact on our lifestyles, as well as the energy cost of the exhibitions. (Nicolas Rosette, curator)