In Inupiaq tradition, a tribe of indigenous people from northwestern Alaska, glaciers carry memories from the past and communicate them in song. The climate crisis has become a terrifying reality that includes seeing the end of glaciers — the end of these sung histories — happen before our eyes. Once a Glacier shows a gesture of nurturing, and whether the girl's efforts are successful or not, the work suggests a poignant level of grace and humility for moving forward into the future. The project is inspired by own experience of the artist Jiabao Li from a year that she lived in Alaska.

Jiabao Li
Jenny Qinya Guo
Saint Denis
Natalia Severina
Kirill Klochkov
Matt McCorkle
Joan Naviyuk Kane
Boxiang Yu
Carolyn Nahyoumaurak
Annika Schmidt
Cooper Galvin
Julie Decker, James Temte
Marco Tedesco

Live performance Once a Glacier at IDFA, Amsterdam. Augmented with motion capture, the dancer embodies the glacier, tracing the memory of glacier from ice age to Anthropocene through her ice core. The audience confront the birth and death of glacier through the girl's point of view.