Vulnerability and a cry for protection

Yesterday I watched Jan van der Berg's film Silent snow http://www.silentsnow.org/which we are going to include in this year's Ecofilms Festival http://www.ecofilms.gr/ An Inuit search for solutions to the chemical poisoning of the world. .Against a background of melting ice Silent Snow focuses on a prelude to a worldwide problem of dramatic proportions: the poisoning of humans and animals by dangerous pesticides like DDT (Persistent Organic Pollutants – POPs). Via currents in the ocean they reach the artic where they accumulate in plankton, fish and bigger animals like seagulls and polar bears. But they also travel through the air as they attach to snow and end up in the environment when the snow melts. Inuit in Greenland eat the fat of seagulls and whales which used to protect them against diseases and provided vitamins lacking elsewhere in their frozen country with little eatable vegetation. Now however, it ruins their health because the chemicals accumulate especially in this fat. Women in Greenland should no longer breastfeed, men are confronted with fertility problems and research shows that especially children are harmed the most. High POP levels in bloodstreams lead to a significantly lower IQ in children and in the Inuit communities already twice as many girls as boys are being born. And even though the first signs of this pollution have become especially visible in the artic, the pesticide pollution will sooner or later affect the entire world. Ecofilms will also screen this year Werner Herzog's beautiful last film shot in Antarctica Encounters at the End of the world http://luciarikaki.blogspot.com/2007/12/we-have-to-declare-holy-war-against.html
These films reminded me of the campaign Greenpeace did this summer with S.Tunick on another global issue
The humans will be vulnerable just as the glacier is vulnerable The softness of the bodies and the hardness of the glacier and how this glacier is weakening
Human artwork and reaction to what is happening Spencer and around 600 people ventured with Greenpeace to the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland.The installation was part of a Greenpeace campaign to raise awareness of global warming. Vulnerability......... and a cry for protection...by Patsie M. The Aletsch glacier, Greenpeace, Spencer Tunick and 600 naked models. Are they not the best ingredients to raise a powerful interest against the frighteningly increasing global warming ? Although the Aletsch glacier still shows us his overwhelming savage beauty, Greenpeace looks with fear and a great concern to this exponential beautiful but steadily decreasing giant.Definitely, Greenpeace needs a helping hand. Is Tunick, with his already legendary small ladder and loud-hailer, not exactly the one they need? After all he is an amazing artist blessed with an intriguing view, and the ability to masterly bring out all force of an image with just one click. Again the images of his installations on the glacier don't lie. People, naked and stripped off of all modern accessories, look like the little fragile cavemen who once roamed the glaciers to conquer the world.We are still as surprised and overwhelmed as our ancestors before, and very, very aware of our smallness in the ice- desert. As if it were an echo, we still can peer in this long gone times....Isn't it just this particular image with which Tunick zooms in on our past and engraves it forever in our mind? http://www.thespencertunickexperience.org/