Okjökull, ágúst 2019 – Vatnajökull, ágúst 2219
An announcement for a funeral 200 years in the future
Melonie Mowinski / Joseph Ostraff
We were part of an artist collective that met together in Reykjavik, Iceland in August 2019. This was the same month that a unique funeral was held. Oddur Sigurðsson, one of Iceland’s leading glaciologists, declared Okjökull glacier dead in 2014. He, along with anthropologists Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer, put together a proposal to memorialize Okjökull with a plaque. In August, 2019 the anthropologists, Sigurðsson, and interested members of the public hiked to a point on Ok glacier to affix the plaque to one of its rocks. The inscription was written in Icelandic by author and poet Andri Snær Magnason, and includes a translation into English: A letter to the future Ok is the first Icelandic glacier to lose its status as a glacier. In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path. This monument is to acknowledge that we know what is happening and what needs to be done. Only you will know if we did it. August 2019 The text concludes with “415ppm C02,” the ratio of greenhouse gases on Earth recorded in May 2019. This message has had a deep impact on us. We are not residents of Iceland, but we reside in a country that is one of the leading contributors to global warming and the glaciers of Iceland are a strong indicator of environmental health on a global level. As mentioned, experts have predicted that if things continue as they are now that within 200 years all glaciers will be gone in Iceland. Vatnajökull is the largest so we are assuming that it will be the last to go. Inspired by this first funeral of sorts, it is our purpose to take the collages made from material collected in downtown Reykjavik in August, 2019 and add typography to create posters that will announce a funeral for Vatnajökull 200 years in the future. We have made twelve sets of posters, two-hundred posters per set, one poster for each year leading up to 2219. It is contained in a box forming a book of sorts. Each August a poster announcing the death of Vatnajökull will be stamped with that month and year and then exhibited until the following year when the process will be repeated. Theoretically this performative activity will go on until the actual death of Vatnajökull or until there is a reversal in the current trend.Included in the following collections:Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University Library, Yale University, CT The Peace Factory, Tel Aviv, Israel Book Arts Collection, Cleveland Institute of Art, OH Ballinglen Art Museum Collection, Ballycastle, Co Mayo, IRE Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah Special Collections, Rice University, Houston, TX Special Collections, Baylor University, Waco, TX 
