Exhibitions
Antarctic Resolution
Fondazione Kenta, Milan, 2021
Fondazione Kenta invites UNLESS to contribute officially to Pre-COP with a Collateral Event event promoted by All4Climate dedicated to “Antarctic Resolution”.
The preparatory meetings for the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – also known as COP26 – are held in Milan between the 30th of September and the 2nd of October, 2021. On this occasion, Fondazione Kenta invites UNLESS, a non-profit agency for change founded by Giulia Foscari, to contribute officially to Pre-COP26 with an event promoted by All4Climate dedicated to “Antarctic Resolution”.“Antarctic Resolution” is the first holistic body of research ever produced on the Antarctic which offers a high-resolution image of our seventh continent, a Global Commons we collective neglect.
Developed by UNLESS in collaboration with the world’s leading experts on Antarctica, “Antarctic Resolution” focusses on the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. Aspiring to catalyse and disseminate knowledge on the Antarctic – a territory that is equivalent to 10% of our planet’s landmass and contains 70% of the world’s freshwater – “Antarctic Resolution” calls for action.
On occasion of Pre-COP, the monumental volume of “Antarctic Resolution” (published by Lars Müller Publishers) is presented within the spaces of the Fabbrica Sassetti of Fondazione Kenta alongside the work by four acclaimed artists, whose critical photographic portfolios (featured extensively in the volume) offer insights on the natural and political forces covertly at play in 26 quadrillion tons of ice.
The accelerated thinning of the Antarctic ice cap induced by anthropogenic global warming, and the impending menace that it represents to global coastal settlements threatened by a potential rise in sea level of 60 meters, is revealed by the aerial photographs taken by Paolo Pellegrin during NASA’s Operation IceBridge, in 2019. Known also for having been featured on the cover of Times Magazine as vivid evidence of the effects of climate change, the work urges the enforcement of environmental policies to reduce the pace by which Antarctic glaciers are relentlessly calving into the Southern Ocean.
While Pellegrin records the alarming metamorphosis of the southernmost cryosphere at territorial scale, Spencer Lowell forensic work zooms into the depths of the ice sheet, revealing the unparalleled potential of ice to act as a repository of data on the history of the world’s climate. Microscopic air bubbles captive in frozen matter, detectable in Lowell’s photographs of 50,000-year-old Antarctic ice cores, act as time-capsules that embody information on the historic trends of greenhouse gasses and temperatures in past glacial and interglacial eras. The data they contain prove unequivocally that our contemporary levels of atmospheric CO2 are two times greater than the maximum values ever reached in the past 800.000 years and offer policy makers factual scientific evidence of the magnitude of the planetary crisis we are witnessing.
Far from being purely the pristine natural landscape depicted by Pellegrin and Lowell, the continent is a contested territory which conceals also resources that might prove irresistible in a world with ever-increasing population growth. The proliferation of national research stations observed in recent decades – whose presence is advocated in the name of science despite having in average only 13% of the surface area dedicated to scientific laboratories and only 1 out of 9 occupants being scientists – leave contaminating traces of an expanding anthropic footprint on the continent. Such traces were recorded by the work of Anne Noble and Shaun O’Boyle.
Whilst the provocative photographs by Anne Noble on “Piss Poles” and “Fuel Bladders” document individual and systemic contamination sources (which invariably raise fundamental questions on the appropriateness of inhabiting a territory in which fuel consumption alone is six-fold compared to anywhere else on planet earth due to sheer operational logistics), Shaun O’Boyle’s work investigates the polar built environment from the scale of the single scientific station to that of vast informal settlements such as the logistic hub of McMurdo.
A detailed census of all Antarctic stations ever erected in the 200 years since the first landing on the continent (which occurred in 1821), is displayed within the publication. Advocating for the day in which nations will cease to overtly assert territorial claims through architecture within Global Commons favouring shared infrastructure, the complete archive of buildings constructed below the 60th parallel south, reveals at once the essence of Antarctica as Space analogue for the prototyping of extreme inhabitation models, and unveils the paradoxes induced by the reluctance of the consultative member states to the Antarctic Treaty – who manage the continent on behalf of the remaining 85% of nations – to formulate an enforceable legal framework capable to guarantee a future-proof sustainable and equitable governance of the Antarctic.
Download Press Release here
Photo Credits © Delfino Sisto Legnani
The preparatory meetings for the Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change – also known as COP26 – are held in Milan between the 30th of September and the 2nd of October, 2021. On this occasion, Fondazione Kenta invites UNLESS, a non-profit agency for change founded by Giulia Foscari, to contribute officially to Pre-COP26 with an event promoted by All4Climate dedicated to “Antarctic Resolution”.“Antarctic Resolution” is the first holistic body of research ever produced on the Antarctic which offers a high-resolution image of our seventh continent, a Global Commons we collective neglect.
Developed by UNLESS in collaboration with the world’s leading experts on Antarctica, “Antarctic Resolution” focusses on the continent’s unique geography, unparalleled scientific potential, contemporary geopolitical significance, experimental governance system, and extreme inhabitation model. Aspiring to catalyse and disseminate knowledge on the Antarctic – a territory that is equivalent to 10% of our planet’s landmass and contains 70% of the world’s freshwater – “Antarctic Resolution” calls for action.
On occasion of Pre-COP, the monumental volume of “Antarctic Resolution” (published by Lars Müller Publishers) is presented within the spaces of the Fabbrica Sassetti of Fondazione Kenta alongside the work by four acclaimed artists, whose critical photographic portfolios (featured extensively in the volume) offer insights on the natural and political forces covertly at play in 26 quadrillion tons of ice.
The accelerated thinning of the Antarctic ice cap induced by anthropogenic global warming, and the impending menace that it represents to global coastal settlements threatened by a potential rise in sea level of 60 meters, is revealed by the aerial photographs taken by Paolo Pellegrin during NASA’s Operation IceBridge, in 2019. Known also for having been featured on the cover of Times Magazine as vivid evidence of the effects of climate change, the work urges the enforcement of environmental policies to reduce the pace by which Antarctic glaciers are relentlessly calving into the Southern Ocean.
While Pellegrin records the alarming metamorphosis of the southernmost cryosphere at territorial scale, Spencer Lowell forensic work zooms into the depths of the ice sheet, revealing the unparalleled potential of ice to act as a repository of data on the history of the world’s climate. Microscopic air bubbles captive in frozen matter, detectable in Lowell’s photographs of 50,000-year-old Antarctic ice cores, act as time-capsules that embody information on the historic trends of greenhouse gasses and temperatures in past glacial and interglacial eras. The data they contain prove unequivocally that our contemporary levels of atmospheric CO2 are two times greater than the maximum values ever reached in the past 800.000 years and offer policy makers factual scientific evidence of the magnitude of the planetary crisis we are witnessing.
Far from being purely the pristine natural landscape depicted by Pellegrin and Lowell, the continent is a contested territory which conceals also resources that might prove irresistible in a world with ever-increasing population growth. The proliferation of national research stations observed in recent decades – whose presence is advocated in the name of science despite having in average only 13% of the surface area dedicated to scientific laboratories and only 1 out of 9 occupants being scientists – leave contaminating traces of an expanding anthropic footprint on the continent. Such traces were recorded by the work of Anne Noble and Shaun O’Boyle.
Whilst the provocative photographs by Anne Noble on “Piss Poles” and “Fuel Bladders” document individual and systemic contamination sources (which invariably raise fundamental questions on the appropriateness of inhabiting a territory in which fuel consumption alone is six-fold compared to anywhere else on planet earth due to sheer operational logistics), Shaun O’Boyle’s work investigates the polar built environment from the scale of the single scientific station to that of vast informal settlements such as the logistic hub of McMurdo.
A detailed census of all Antarctic stations ever erected in the 200 years since the first landing on the continent (which occurred in 1821), is displayed within the publication. Advocating for the day in which nations will cease to overtly assert territorial claims through architecture within Global Commons favouring shared infrastructure, the complete archive of buildings constructed below the 60th parallel south, reveals at once the essence of Antarctica as Space analogue for the prototyping of extreme inhabitation models, and unveils the paradoxes induced by the reluctance of the consultative member states to the Antarctic Treaty – who manage the continent on behalf of the remaining 85% of nations – to formulate an enforceable legal framework capable to guarantee a future-proof sustainable and equitable governance of the Antarctic.
| Project Title: | Antarctic Resolution |
| Location: | Fondazione Kenta, Milan |
| Year: | 2021 |
| Status: | Completed |
| Programme: | Exhibition |
| Team: | Giulia Foscari, Joshua Labarraque and Federica Zambeletti |
| Exhibitors: | UNLESS in collaboration with Shaun O’Boyle, Spencer Lowell, Anne Noble, Paolo Pellegrin |
Download Press Release here
Photo Credits © Delfino Sisto Legnani
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