Over the course of the Earth’s history climatic changes have resulted in the rise and fall of thousands of species. Now the human species itself faces existential threats arising from massive transformations of the environment. Human-made systems create and deploy new technologies as tools of social evolution, and we are now living in a techno-system functioning cooperatively with humanity and the natural systems of the planet. Called the “technosphere”, this system is the defining matrix and main driver behind the ongoing transition of our planet into a new geological epoch of humankind, the Anthropocene. The technosphere has now acquired an enormous but not yet determinate potential to alter the surface of the earth as well as its great depths – from the orbital level to the ocean floor. One key element for the survival of the human species is the balance between solid ice and liquid water, which is fundamental to all life operations on our planet. Atmospheric change brought about by increasing CO2 emissions is now heating up the globe and accelerating the process of climate change. This development poses a calamitous threat to the world population both present and future as one of its consequences is the retreat of glaciers and melting of glacial ice, which leads to globally rising sea levels, flooding, loss of habitable land and scarcity of food and drinking water.

The artwork “transition” pictures the transformation process of solid ice into liquid water. Over recent decades the majority of the world’s glaciers have suffered a drastic reduction in mass as a consequence of global climate change. The formal composition of the artwork is underpinned by a horizontal spatial extension dividing the picture into three sections. On the horizon we see mountains covered by thin disappearing layers of snow. They stand as an allegory of geological development and the timeline of our planet over billions of years. The middle and center parts of the picture show the surface of a massive Icelandic glacier that from a distance looks like the surface of the ocean. The solid ice blocks seem to be caught in a wave-like motion. At the bottom we see a powerful black wave breaking and catapulting plumes of water high in the air. The waves seem to hurl frothing eruptions at the air and towards the viewer. The blurred boundaries in this hybrid landscape, a triad of mountains, ice and water, underscore the process of transition that appears to have become irreversible in our new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.