Memories of the Future (2017)

MEMORIES OF THE FUTURE shows the changing metabolism of the earth. The American state of Alaska is so dependent on oil for its revenues that its economy would be comparable to that of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia if it were a country. At the same time, Alaska is one of the battlefields of climate change. The temperature in Alaska has risen more than twice as much as in the rest of the United States, which means that the once permanently frozen subsoil is now slowly thawing. The series consists of two parts. In DRUNKEN FOREST, Benedikt Partenheimer shows how the thawing permafrost leads to ‘drunken trees’. The trees tilt as the previously solid soil turns into unstable mud, a process referred to as thermokarst. METHANE shows the methane that has been stored in the frozen soil for thousands of years but is released by the thaw, further accelerating the greenhouse effect. With his photographs of burning methane, Partenheimer connects the two faces of Alaska – the large-scale extraction of fossil fuels and climate change.