This time capsule is a time-travelling machine that allows a piece of biodiversity to travel to a probable future. The two-metre-diameter sphere integrates technological equipment capable of creating the conditions that a plot of land might experience in 2070 – in this case, a piece of territory located under the future former Fellaria glacier in Lombardy. Between adaptation and disappearance, between death and vitality, the simulation raises the debate: should we watch the glacier disappear, or the meadow settle in?
© Cynthia Ammann
© TAKK // mireia luzárraga + alejandro muiño. Tous droits réservés
© TAKK // mireia luzárraga + alejandro muiño. Tous droits réservés
Through a set of sophisticated technologies – including lamps reproducing an amplified solar spectrum, reflective surfaces mimicking intense radiation, and an irrigation system generating significant fluctuations – this autonomous microcosm develops a fragile equilibrium. A showcase both magnificent and deadly, it hosts symbolic vegetation. While some species thrive in this futuristic environment, they do so at the expense of the so-called eternal ice, now melted.
More than a technological feat, this installation grapples with the complexity of our current stances towards the radical transformations of living ecosystems. The technological capabilities at our disposal can indeed replicate, as one would in a spaceship, the conditions for life. We are tempted to believe that technology could repair the ecological imbalances it has helped create, that we could harness this artificial power to safeguard threatened ecosystems. Yet, it is evident that the vitality unfolding within this capsule urges us to adopt a different attitude. Acting as a synecdoche, this sphere reminds us that life is a miracle. Does it not pay homage to Earth, the only planet known to date that supports life? As a miniature of the biosphere, it contextualises our technological power. The forces that enable life, even in times of disaster, are indeed cosmic – not merely human.
