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Here the term Tipping Point is taken in its sociological sense which refers to a dramatic moment when some singular phenomenon becomes common.
In 2014, the Icelandic glacier Okjökull died. It's the first glacier in the world recognized as "officially" extinct due to climatic upheavals and human pressures on the earth system. In August 2019, a commemorative plaque was placed at the site of the disappeared glacier. It will probably not be the first time that a glacier has disappeared. But in living memory, this is undoubtedly a first, as it took millions of years to create these glaciers, which died out in a few decades under our impact.
This tragedy represents a Tipping Point both climatic - a disappearing giant - and human - the official recognition of the phenomenon - towards the New Climate Regime (Bruno Latour) with which we must deal...
The installation Tipping Point is a sensitive and poetic work inviting the viewer to intend to the birth of an artificial glacier, drop after drop, inspired by the “ice stupas” that have been born in Ladakh since 2014 under the leadership of Sonam Wangchuk, intended to fight against water shortages during major droughts.
Contemporary vanity evoking our desire for immortality, it will take... the time of the exhibition for the glacier to grow, drop by drop, thus confronting the viewer with the time it took for the earth system to create a glacier, elsewhere, in actual size.
It's a deceptive exercise for the viewer confronted with something that is no longer or that is not yet, and yet, which leaves room for the contemplation of what it has been and what it may become: a glacier today disappeared or a new glacier in formation, materialization of Tipping Point.
The poetics released by the installation does not stop only at this question of the tipping point: many analogies can be found with the thorny question of repairing a disturbed climate, of the hold of the human being on its environment or accessibility to fresh water... or an evocation of a living laboratory.
