For the month of February, my installation Cold Storage will be on display in the group show, White Noise at Worksound Gallery.
PORT even has a video of the opening on their blog. It ends by going into my iceberg; similar to my own video.
Artist Statement
Cold Storage
Mission Statement of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault:
“The purpose of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is to provide insurance against both incremental and catastrophic loss of crop diversity held in traditional seed banks around the world. The Seed Vault offers “fail-safe” protection for one of the most natural resources on earth.”
Currently, our world’s seeds are stored in a well locked tunnel on a quiet island of Norway. This vault is naturally cooled with freezing Arctic air and is surrounded by slowly melting icebergs. This construction is basically a safety deposit box for seed banks around the globe. For the “Cold Storage” installation each iceberg has been systematically created based on this vault.
Each of the icebergs are represented by a different continent. Each form is constructed with the countries from that particular region. The size of each country is based on the amount of seeds they donated to the vault. This changes the look and dominance of each country.
Two hundred and twenty countries store seeds at this vault and one wonders how these will be protected. If there is a global disaster will this single vault decide who has the most power? Could the country with the most seeds have supremacy? Of all the countries India would become the dominant authority; it holds over 45 million seeds at Svalbard. The second highest would be Mexico with 15 million. The smallest country is Equatorial Guinea with only 43 seeds.
A seed vault offers global insurance against disaster. Seeds are already disappearing and this vault should protect future generations. It seems like something from a science fiction novel, but this is our reality.
