Ice Cry Baby (2017)
Ice Cry Baby consists of a compilation of YouTube videos of melting ice and collapsing glaciers collected by Anouk Kruithof. In the video loop, she confronts the viewer with the ongoing catastrophe of global warming. The artist shows how a disastrous reality is aestheticised and seemingly thoughtlessly shared on social media. Because it seems like the short amateur footage is posted mainly for spectacle.
With Ice Cry Baby, Kruithof asks critical questions about contemporary spectacle culture, our digitally mediated relationship with nature and how our excessive image consumption leads to saturation and ultimately indifference. The crashing ice masses in the video symbolise the imbalance between humans and nature – and a collective moral degradation.
The haunting silence in Ice Cry Baby is sometimes interrupted by an awe-inspiring scream from an amateur filmmaker. Audible too is the repetitive dull thud in the other video in space. Not only the sound, but also the signification of both works infiltrate each other.