December 17th, 7 pm
Cryo is based on the concept of cryopolitics (Michael Bravo, 2006), which focuses attention on how global cold chains have become geopolitically, economically, biologically and symbolically vital in the 21st century. The cryosphere, or coldscape, is the planetary network of cold formed by the polar ice caps, snow-capped mountains known as the ‘Third Pole’ and artificial low-temperature production systems (server refrigerators, refrigerated containers for transporting goods, air conditioners, gene bank freezers, etc.). A cryoecological network where ice blurs the natural/artificial, life/death and urban/rural divides as part of an interconnected continuum.
Cryo connects three unrelated contexts that on the face of it seem unrelated, delving into the cryopolitical continuum that unites them all: Farrera, a small town in the High Pyrenees; La Fuliola, a village of a thousand inhabitants in the county of L’Urgell; and the city of Barcelona. In each of these contexts, I am working on a technothermic figuration, a technology of cold from which we will explore the networks of life/death that are intertwined with cold.
These three areas represent a fundamental axis of displacement in the economic, social and ecological composition of the territory, both historically and in the present day. Cryo travels along this axis by questioning the material and symbolic conditions that shape cold ecosystems today, and it does so through methodologies permeated by speculative gestures. The project is conceived as an exercise in political imagination that promotes epistemic justice as regards the accounts of present climates to come.
