Video

Full HD video with sound. English with Spanish subtitles Right: Susan Schuppli, Cold Rights, 11’40” Left: 1. Omar Ferwati, Nicholas Masterton, Freezing Deaths & Abandonment Across Canada, 31’55” 2. Omar Ferwati, Kishan San, Weaponizing Water Against Water Protectors at Standing Rock, N. Dakota, 18’34” 3. Omar Ferwati, Kishan San, Icebox Detention Along the US-Mexico Border, 14’18”

Cold Cases explores the politics of ‘the unresolved’ through a series of cases and contexts in which the differential experiences and effects of temperature are intertwined with legal issues, human rights violations, but also social and environmental justice claims.It is universally acknowledged that ice is under considerable threat from global warming and is in urgent need of care and preservation practices. Temperature is often ‘naturalised’ as an environmental condition beyond human control when it comes to accounting for the production of harm and violence against bodies in cold contexts. Through the analysis of a series of contemporary and historical ‘cold cases’, the project explores the strategic role of temperature and speculates on the emergence of a new thermopolitics defined by cold. Temperature becomes a register of violence; one that includes the legacies of climate colonialism, long-standing socio-economic inequalities and ongoing structural racism. The videos in “Cold Cases” invite viewers to reflect on the ethical imaginaries implicit in the joint term ‘justice’ and, by extension, the experiential valence of temperature as it interacts with and is instrumentalised by institutions, bodies, materials and environments.