THE WEIGHT
OF ABSENCE
A silent public procession culminates in the erection of a shrine marking an ice level that is no longer present.
CONCEPT
The work begins with a silent public procession and culminates in the collective erection of a shrine in a glacier forefield. The procession turns the approach to the site into a shared act of attention rather than a commemorative spectacle.
The open timber structure contains a single vertical plumb line. Suspended from the roof and secured against wind, it establishes a precise relation between gravity, the present ground and a disappeared level of ice. A year inscribed in the structure identifies the temporal reference.
The shrine does not reconstruct the missing glacier. It gives the absent volume a spatial measure. What can no longer be seen becomes perceptible through the distance between the plumb line, the marked level and the transformed landscape.
Participatory public action and site-specific sculpture
Silent procession · open wooden shrine · single plumb line
Timber · stainless-steel fittings · red-pigmented roof · plumb line
Year of a documented ice level inscribed in the structure
Ongoing project · proposed site-specific installation · location subject to local collaboration