Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek

Assistant Professor, Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway

«seeds for thought»

Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek will be doing a joint presentation with Heidi Nikolaisen.

Heidi Nikolaisen and Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek are both practicing international visual artists and teach at Subject Area Photography at the Dept of Spesialised Art, Bergen National Academy of the Arts. Nikolaisen (Norwegian) is based in Bergen, while Schmidt-Bleek (German/American) lives and works primarily in Berlin, Germany. They are currently in the first stages of researching their individual projects, both generated from a mutual vantage point. Their interest lies in the ambitious mission of the Norwegian government to compile and establish the world’s largest archive of crop seeds, housed in the depths of the arctic archipelago of Svalbard, Spitzbergen. Nikolaisen and Schmidt-Bleek aim to generate larger-scale long-term projects, involving interdisciplinary approaches.

“Originally 100°C Was The Melting Point of Ice” “(or In Search of the Identical Snowflake)” is a research project in the making, currently investigating the many strata’s of ice, or crystallized snow. The main title is based on the Swedish botanist, Carolus Linneaus, who in 1744 redesigned the centigrade thermometer by reversing the temperature scale invented by Anders Celsius, into what it is today. Originally the melting point of ice was 100?C and water had a boiling point of 0?C.

World’s largest seed bank

The sub-zero temperature of the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is precisely one of the driving motivations for the construction of the world’s largest and most diverse seed bank in Svalbard. By February 2008, the building of a high-security vault will be finalized, both financed and administered by the Norwegian government. Its aim is to house millions of samples of crop seeds from virtually every variety of food on the planet. Also coined “a complete Noah’s Ark for agriculture”, this undertaking plans to store the vast amount of invaluable information encapsulated in each seed by carving the storage space into a mountain. This ideal location, due to its lack of tectonic activity and its longtime permafrost, hopes to help preserve the seeds contributed from all around the world.

This starting point provides Schmidt-Bleek’s with “seeds for thought” and set perimeters evolving around the idea of ice. Ice is the key factor for the seed bank in preserving this vital information for securing future food supplies contained within the seeds themselves. Ice is also a form of crystallized snowflakes, which alludes to the subtitle of the artist’s project, “In Search of the Identical Snowflake”. Many questions have been asked around this phenomenon and research done to prove or disprove the existence of the identical snowflake. The mere task of documenting a single snowflake already presents great problems due the ephemeral characteristics of the quickly melting ice formation. Reaching beyond the realms of science, this question might arouse a variety of discussion themes such as the idea of the doppelganger etc.

Identical snowflakes

The task Schmidt-Bleek presents herself within this project in the making is the physical and metaphorical construction of two identical snowflakes. In science, there are presently 14 known phases of ice with different characteristics. Schmidt-Bleek intends to involve the equivalent number of people from varying professions as a collective attempt to “construct” or interpret the concept of the identical snowflakes. This list will include people such as a science fiction writer, a physicist, someone from the Svalbard International Seed Vault project, an ecological chemist, a science photographer and an ice bar owner in Svalbard.

This analysis through the various “context filters” by the range of different professionals present questions such as the concept of authorship and the pertinence of the long-term research process in regards to the final outcome.

For more information about Cornelia Schmidt-Bleek´s previous work please see:
www.galeriekamm.de
www.galeriehohenlohe.at