A photo series by Oliver Ressler
2019–2023
New Ruins, New Intransigence is a series bringing together photographic works that seek to narrate the planetary environmental catastrophe. Several of the works use aerial views of surfaces such as permafrost soil, sea ice, open-cast lignite mines, forests, an oil slick on a sandy beach, or clouds. Short texts are woven into the photographic images, revealing the destructive consequences of economic activity. For example, one photograph shows the huge cracks in thawing permafrost soil caused by global heating, rearranged so that the cracks form the text “Arctic permafrost is less permanent than its name suggests”, inscribed directly on the drone photograph of permafrost soil.
Ameli M. Klein describes it like this: “Although Ressler makes deliberate use of aerial views of ‘natural surfaces’ such as the drifting ice slabs in Every round-trip ticket on flights from New York to London costs the Arctic three more square meters of ice and the greening (former) permafrost grounds in Arctic permafrost is less permanent than its name suggests, his work never evokes romanticized notions of nature as something once pristine but now tainted by human-made emergency. Ressler takes care to avoid the type of photographic aestheticization that ‘captures’ desolate landscapes.”[i] The writer continues: “The use of a language of abstraction in Ressler’s photography, often through high altitude angles and the omission of any horizontal line that might orient the gaze, triggers a sense of disarray. The planar, frontal view of the planetary surface serves as backdrop to Ressler’s statement, and at the same time both as subject and object of his inquiry. The effort to evoke affect through artistic work—to communicate outside a friendly discursive echo chamber—is always in tension with the critique of aestheticization and simplification.”
The texture of the short texts woven into backdrops can be quite complex. From a distance, the fonts forming the text Property Will Cost Us the Earth look like irregular grey. On closer inspection, drawings of animals appear. The letters themselves consist of line drawings of hundreds of threatened species of wildlife. The mammals, birds, fish, amphibia, reptiles and insects shown are all endangered: all appear in the IUCN Red List of 38,500 species under threat of extinction. The graphic image lays bare a graphic truth. Humanity has already reached a phase known to scientists as the 6th Mass Extinction. Animals and plants are dying out at the fastest rate since the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The drawings bear witness to the variety of the life already at risk, all soon to be in catastrophic danger if we let capital carry on business as usual.
The visual strategy used in Dog Days Bite Back (2023) introduces another twist: “The dog days of summer are not just barking, they are biting,” stated UN Secretary-General António Guterres in 2023 with regard to the hottest summer in recorded history. Formally referencing blockbuster movie ads, we see a dog attacking, emerging from a burning devastated landscape. The attack is directed against us, the viewer. The image is fighting for our attention to the struggle for urgently needed social, ecological and political transition.
All the photographs of New Ruins, New Intransigence have a captivating urgency. They adopt and at the same time try to enhance the visual language of protest, seeking to become tools for action. The works are direct, as if the Earth itself was telling us: TAKE ACTION YOURSELF. DON’T WAIT FOR GOVERNMENTS PRETENDING TO ACT ON YOUR BEHALF.
Some photographs were presented in public spaces as large-scale posters, while another was used as a sticker for a campaign to reduce air traffic. Many of the posters showed up in demonstrations, such as in the massive 3-day climate action The Big One in London in April 2023.
[i] Ameli M. Klein, “Property Will Cost Us the Earth”, in: Oliver Ressler. Barricading the Ice Sheets, Corina Apostol, Marius Babias, Reinhard Braun, Pablo DeSoto, Gabriela Salgado, Leila Topić (eds.), Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2023.
