4 Channel synchronized 4k video 35 minutes (2024)

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​Inspired by Percy Shelley’s poem “Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamonix” End & Being uses the text as a lens through which to sensitively examine the ecological fallout of an irreversibly warming planet.
Considered an ode to the Mont Blanc Massif, Shelly's work explores the relationship between the human mind and the natural world, representing it as an interwoven consciousness. The dramatic scenery near Chamonix that influenced the text is awe-inspiring, destructive and sublime. These landscapes have been dramatically altered by climate change since the text was written in 1816. Referenced glaciers in the text have almost disappeared. The surrounding mountain’s now crumbling down due to their permafrost melting.

Unfolding as a daily ritual Jacobus’s project sought to reconcile human undoing upon the landscape that featured in the text through one sustained, sensitive and subtle engagement. The predominant gesture guiding the project became the gruelling  daily act of visiting one of three locations upon, and within, the Bosson's Glacier in Chamonix on foot. To spend and document, a minute of silence with the melting mass body of ice each day. An act towards greater fathoming impermanence. An act that became a vigil. An act that became a state of mourning.

This was enacted over the course of 89 consecutive days, and given the precarious environment put him at constant risk of falling serac’s, rockfall, avalanches, as well as hidden and ever changing crevasses.

Because the same 3 locations were frequented throughout the 89 days, it becomes visibly evident in the captured footage how rapid the glacier is melting through changes in the landscape. Forms disappear, crevasses become gapingly larger. The red/brown hue the ice sometimes has is resultant from specific environmental conditions scattering Saharan desert sand from North Africa across the glaciers surface. Since dust absorbs more solar energy than snow it rapidly accelerates the melt of the already vulnerable glacier.

A site of both environmental and human catastrophe, the Bossons is also continually revealing the debris and remains of two aircraft crashes that occurred amongst the Mont Blanc Massif in the 1950’s and 60’s, of which there were no survivors. As wreckage has slowly traveled down through the glacier over time and been moulded by its movement, its now rawly exposed at the front terminus. Twisted debris and human belongings were frequently encountered and sensitively negotiated throughout this durational undertaking. An 89 day commitment, where a total of 151,122 vertical metres of elevation were amassed over 1864 kilometres. A volume of exertion that couldn’t help but inflict both physical and psychological trauma upon the body and being.

 

This project has been supported be the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries