inoffensive art
text by ÉRIC TRONCY
On Dec. 3, 2015, on the square in front of the Pantheon in Paris, international artist Olafur Eliasson oversaw the installation of his new work, Ice Watch, a collaboration with geologist Minik Rosing. Describing the work in The Huffington Post, Sélène Agapé wrote: “It’s made of 12 blocks of ice, together weighing almost 100 tons, collected during a joint trek through a fjord near Nuuk, in the waters off Greenland.
The weight of the ice is not arbitrary: 100 tons is the amount of ice melting worldwide every 100 th of a second. And the blocks have been set in a circle, forming a clock face.”
On the first evening, the French television news reported on the installation (it was a slow news day). Over the next few days, newspapers and several magazines followed suit, covering the logistics of the project, the weight…