Rembert De Prez - Experimental Garden - A Conversation on Permafrost

Experimental Garden – A Conversation on Permafrost' (2021-2023) questions how to visualise the phenomenon of thawing permafrost. The project contains fifty-eight images and text fragments collected in Arctic regions, exposing the doubts and limitations inherent to documentary making.

Permafrost is soil that should remain permanently frozen. However, due to climate change, this soil is thawing. This causes greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane to be released into the atmosphere, accelerating global warming.

Since thawing permafrost is invisible, one of the first questions was how to visualize this phenomenon. To address this challenge the images were made in close collaboration with on-field climate scientists from the University Centre in Svalbard, Norway and the Climate Impacts Research Centre in Abisko, Sweden.

However, this aspect of invisibility brings uncertainty. Uncertainty as a maker but also on a societal level towards the topic of climate change. Therefore, the work aims at embracing these notions. 'Experimental Garden - A Conversation on Permafrost' takes the form of a sequence of images along with a sequence of text running asynchronously from one another. Sometimes they meet up but soon they go separate ways again, hinting at the scenes without their visual presence. Through this, the work investigates the doubts and limitations that come along within photographic documentary making.

[steam from the hot tea merges into the cold air]

- “Permafrost is the foundation upon which life in the Arctic is built, and its thawing threatens to destabilise the entire region. But because it is hidden from view, it is easy to ignore, to dismiss as a problem for another day.”

[measuring equipment beeps three times]

- “But the invisibility is also its greatest danger. It is a reminder that the effects of climate change are not always obvious, that they can be insidious and slow.”

[fieldwork continues]

[barking dog]