Sep 30 2024 16 mins
This episode is recorded on site in Val d’Hérens (CH), where Dr Gianalberto Losapio and his scientific team installed their camp for several weeks and were joined by artist Maëlle Cornut. During a hike, the tandem discusses field work from a scientific and an artistic perspective and shares some of their joint activities such as the installation of camera traps to spot animals, the collection of samples and the use of microphotography. Dr Gianalberto Losapio talks about Maëlle Cornut’s impact on his perception of colour and the artist explains how the use of macrophotography has changed her perspective on plants and objects. Arriving at the Mont Miné glacier, Maëlle Cornut contemplates the discrepancy between our collective imagination of glaciers and their rocky reality.
Maëlle Cornut is a visual artist, arts researcher and graduate of the Haute école d’art et de design in Geneva (CH). Her practice focuses on feminist and gender issues while her research attempts to understand what connects us to the world around us and how we interact with it. As part of the PolARTS programme Maëlle Cornut produced ‘Glacier companion species’, which is part of the exhibition ‘Watching the Glacier Disappear’ taking place throughout summer 2024 in various locations in Switzerland.
Dr Gianalberto Losapio is an environmental scientist with a PhD in Ecology from the University of Zurich, previously Postdoctoral Researcher at Stanford University and at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). He is principal investigator of the Biodiversity Change group at the University of Lausanne and Assistant Professor of Botany at the University of Milan.
About PolARTS:
PolARTS is a joint initiative of the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia and the Swiss Polar Institute to stimulate exchange and foster collaboration between art and science. Past and current editions of PolARTS: Selected tandems 2022, Selected tandems 2024.
Mentioned in this episode:
’Intertwined destinies: glaciers and their companion species’: The blog documents the collaboration of Dr Gianalberto Losapio and Maëlle Cornut and the different stages of the project.