ASI Museum, Reykjavik

Infinite Next is the title of an individual work, group exhibitions, seminars and projects, a collaboration which addresses the different ways societal systems struggle with late-capitalism, ecosystems in degradation, human experiments to alter the environment, knowledge production, manifestations and human impact on the environment. Infinity is limitless, there is endless space, size or context and it is impossible to measure or view it in entirety. In the works within this project, wedding infinity with the idea of the next proposes that the present historical moment is defined by the perception of endless new tasks and interconnectedness of systems. Geological history, which is measured on long time scales, is now bound with human history, making for unexpected and new realities.

Infinite Next began as a collaboration between Anna Líndal and Bjarki Bragason in 2014. The research project consists of examining climate change from a historical perspective, considering its cultural and political histories and the future of the phenomenon through art and art research. In the spring of 2015 the Nordic Culture Point Kulturkontakt Nord funded their research expedition and exhibition in Greenland. They were in residency at the Ilulissat Municipal Art Museum on the country’s west coast for a month and set up an exhibition in which they addressed the museum ´s collection of epic paintings of Greenland's glaciers, and the environmental crisis of the melting ice sheet. Anna and Bjarki collaborated with a group of scientists who hosted the climate change conference Ilulissat Climate Days. They gave a lecture on their work and research at the opening of the conference, attempting to cement the conference in a political discourse. Subsequently they took part in a research expedition to Point 660 Glacier with SVALI (Stability and Variations of Arctic Land Ice) Nordic Center for Excellence, a Nordic research initiative, working alongside PhD students in glaciology, studying methods in measuring the cryosphere.

After their stay in Greenland, Anna and Bjarki expanded the project by creating a dialogue with works by artists such as Snæbjörnsdóttir/Wilson,

Pilvi Takala, Amy Howden-Chapman and Hildigunnur Birgisdóttir in an exhibition they curated at the Living Art Museum. In the exhibition they dealt with histories of things, places and events, which in one form or another connect the systems that attempt to maintain, control or change the environment and our understanding of it.

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Stine Hebert - curator