By Marcello Rechberger
Adam Sébire, anthropoScene XII: iceberg care, 2025, video installation. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
Just a few steps separate the sunny courtyard of the Collegium Helveticum from the chilly underground rooms of the historic Semper Observatory, now host of the Swiss Advanced Studies Institute. In June 2026, this short walk became a journey through different ways of engaging with the cryosphere: from scientific lectures on historical sources and archaeological finds to works of art. On a sultry afternoon which contrasted with the focus of the conversations, researchers, artists, and guests from various disciplines and with diverse backgrounds gathered in the Rudolf Wolf Room of the Collegium’s historic premises to explore an environment whose transformation is now almost impossible to overlook: the cryosphere.
Rather than approaching the cryosphere solely through the lens of climate change, the symposium Caring for Naturecultures: The Cryosphere (June 12, 2026) and the accompanying exhibition Caring for Naturecultures: Glaciers (June 12 – July 10, 2026) at the Collegium Helveticum explored the cryosphere as a field of conservation, heritage, archival practices, and care. Bringing together perspectives from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, archaeology, and artistic practice, the events examined the entangled relationships through which glaciers are studied, represented, experienced, and cared for. The events were organised and curated by Hanna Hölling as part of a larger project developed during her Senior Fellowship at the Collegium Helveticum in 2025-26. In this context, the concept of ‘care’ represented not so much a clear-cut solution as a field of tension: between preservation and intervention, between scientific control and the recognition of change.
Ester Vonplon, Gletscherfahrt / Gletschermilch, 2013–2016, Photography, video, artistic book. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
Following a welcome address by Hölling and the Collegium’s director, Sebastian Bonhoeffer, a dense programme unfolded, in which researchers from various fields discussed their approaches to the cryosphere in relation to one another. Each presentation was followed by a brief discussion, allowing topics and concepts to evolve throughout the afternoon. In this context, the ice masses emerged not only as the subject of scientific research, but also as an archive, a space of memory, and a cultural landscape.
Art historian and visual culture scholar Natalie Dietschy, Associate Professor of Art History at the University of Lausanne, opened the symposium with a presentation concerning the artistic interpretation of the use of geotextiles to protect Alpine glaciers. The covers, which are applied in certain Alpine regions to slow down seasonal melting, exemplify a key ambivalence in how we deal with dwindling ice: they stem from a desire to preserve a landscape, whilst at the same time raising new questions about materiality, sustainability, and the long-term consequences of human intervention.
Adam Sébire, Adam Sébire, anthropoScene XII: iceberg care, 2025, video installation. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
Kati Lindström, a scholar of environmental humanities at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden whose work intersects history, anthropology, and geography, shifted the focus from the European Alps to Antarctica. The historical legacies of scientific expeditions and the unique conditions of this continent highlighted the fact that even seemingly remote icy landscapes are linked to human stories, material traces, narratives, and contested forms of heritage. In addition to the working conditions amidst the political tensions surrounding territorial claims, the presentation highlighted the unique living conditions of the cryosphere, where the extremely low temperatures mean that organic material is hardly subject to microbiological decomposition.
Jean Chamel, an anthropologist and researcher at the Institute of Geography and Sustainability at the University of Lausanne, approached glaciers from an ethnographic perspective, arguing that ice landscapes cannot be understood solely through measurements and maps, but also through memories, stories, and lived experiences, demonstrating how ethnography complements scientific understandings of rapidly changing environments.
After a short break, the symposium turned to historical and archaeological perspectives. Art and architectural historian and ETH Zurich professor Philip Ursprung took the 1965 Mattmark Glacier disaster as a starting point for reflections on memory, labour, and migration in Alpine landscapes. The glacier emerged here not merely as a natural environment, but as a space shaped by and shaping social, political, and environmental histories, including structures of inequality whose effects persist into the present.
Dennis Hansen, a biologist and curator at the Natural History Museum of the University of Zurich, took us further back in time using a thought experiment by Johann Jakob Scheuchzer concerning the potential melting of Alpine glaciers. His contribution demonstrated that glaciers have long been objects of scientific inquiry while also revealing how their meanings have changed across different historical forms of knowledge and observation.
Adam Sébire, Adam Sébire, anthropoScene XII: iceberg care, 2025, video installation. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
Thomas Reitmaier, Cantonal Archaeologist of Graubünden, turned attention to the physical traces that are becoming visible again as the ice retreats. Glacial archaeology shows that melting does not merely signify loss, but also exposes objects whose recovery, documentation, and preservation present new challenges. Following this perspective, conservation scientists Giovanna Di Pietro and Johanna Klügl from the Bern Academy of the Arts addressed the challenges of preserving such fragile materials. Their contribution examined how objects emerging from ice require new approaches to documentation, conservation, and long-term care.
The final session, ‘Artistic Responses to Glacial Transformation’, seamlessly led into the opening of the exhibition Caring for Naturecultures: Glaciers. The participating artists – Adam Sébire, Ester Vonplon, and Stefan Rohner – introduced works presented in the exhibition alongside related artistic projects, offering reflections on their creative processes and engaging the audience in a discussion about artistic responses to the rapidly changing cryosphere.
Across the individual presentations, certain themes kept recurring: what does it mean to preserve a landscape that is constantly changing? What responsibilities arise in relation to materials, memories, and places that are being brought to light by climate change? The symposium did not provide definitive answers to these questions. Rather, it created a space in which different forms of knowledge could interact and new questions emerge.
Once the official programme had concluded, the conversation moved to the sunny courtyard of the Collegium Helveticum. Discussions continued, and new conversations began over an Apéro riche. Just a few steps away, the exhibition was already underway, and with it, a different form of engagement with ice. Rather than illustrating the symposium’s discussions, the exhibition extended them through artistic practice. It offered another mode of inquiry, inviting visitors to encounter glaciers not only as scientific objects, but also as aesthetic, emotional, and ethical landscapes.
Artefacts from glaciers, courtesy of the Archaeological Service of Graubünden / Office of Culture and the Glaciology Division of the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH Zurich. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
Descending into the ‘Laboratory’, visitors entered a space in which perception changed immediately. The blackout curtains blocked out the sunlight, the sounds of the courtyard faded away, and in their place emerged an atmosphere characterised by turquoise light and cooling soundscapes. Adam Sébire’s room-filling video installation anthropoScene XII: iceberg care (2025) detached the space from its immediate architectural context and created an environment that straddled the line between documentation and reflection.
The work depicts a person on the coast of Greenland attempting to treat an overturned iceberg using everyday cleaning implements. Snow is swept away from the surface of the ice with an ordinary broom, whilst the exposed ice is polished with a cloth and window cleaner. At first glance, the gesture seems pointless, yet this is precisely where its tension lies: the snow protects the ice from the sun’s rays; removing it intensifies the very processes that contribute to the ice’s disappearance. What appears to be care might be interpreted as an intrusive act.
Continuing through the courtyard and down the spiral staircase of the old Observatory into the building’s underground rooms, a bright blue illuminated information board marked the transition. The deeper one descended between the natural stone walls, the more the atmosphere changed. The rooms grew cooler and darker, whilst the meditative sounds of Pepe Molina Cruz’s Conservare (2024) could be heard in the distance. Combined with the subdued lighting and the rough texture of the walls, it felt as though one were descending into the very heart of a glacier.
Pepe Molina Cruz, Conservare, 2024, video installation. Photo Marcello Rechberger
Visitors were greeted by Ester Vonplon’s works in the first exhibition room. Her video Gletscherfahrt / Gletschermilch (2013–2016) invited visitors to linger, whilst two large-format black-and-white photographs entered into a dialogue with the materiality of the natural stone walls. The installation was complemented by the artist’s book and the accompanying vinyl record, whose soft felt sleeve provided a contrast to the rough surfaces of the room.
A narrow doorway led to the largest room of the exhibition. The raised floor made the elongated room appear almost to be floating like a ship, a raft – or a drifting ice floe. At the centre stood Molina Cruz’s Conservare (2024), projected onto an actual geotextile provided by the Department of Glaciology at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH Zurich. The overlapping of the projection’s support and the images displayed on it, on the one hand, with the black-and-white mountain landscapes and the rough walls, on the other, created striking connections that made the themes of the symposium tangible for the visitors. The pale blue monochrome projection, which flashed up from time to time, formed a chromatic axis with the information board at the entrance.
Stefan Rohner, Arbeiten auf dem Rhone-Gletscher, 2019, video documentation. Photo: Marcello Rechberger
The exhibition was accompanied by Stefan Rohner’s video documentary Arbeiten auf dem Rhone-Gletscher (2019) and a display case containing glacier artefacts provided by the Archaeological Service of Graubünden and ETH Zurich, which had been made accessible by the retreating ice and thus provided a further link to the discussions at the symposium.
The opening, which took place during Zurich Art Weekend, attracted numerous visitors. Throughout its run, the exhibition also became a venue for a variety of encounters. Guided tours led by Hanna Hölling offered visitors the opportunity to explore the works and their links to the ‘Caring for Natureculture’s research project in greater depth. At the same time, two other exhibitions at ETH Zurich explored the theme of glaciers: Glaciers & Rapids – Drawn Switzerland Around 1800 in the ‘Graphische Sammlung’ focused on historical depictions of Swiss ice landscapes, whilst Deglaciation – Surveying the Ice at the ‘extract’ explored methods of surveying and documenting glaciers. Together, the three exhibitions offered different perspectives on a landscape that can be scientifically recorded, artistically explored, and culturally engaged with.
When the path finally led back into the courtyard, the summer warmth remained unchanged. There were still only a few steps between the bright light outside and the cool rooms below. What had changed, however, was the way in which glaciers could be perceived: no longer merely as vanishing landscapes, but as places where questions of knowledge, memory, conservation, ethics, and care converge – and where different forms of knowledge must learn to engage with one another.
*All photographs were shot during the exhibition at the Collegium Helveticum using a Rollei 35 S with CineStill 800T for colour images and Ilford FP4 Plus for black-and-white images.