Schmilz, schmilz, Baby!

Can radical aesthetics, provocative communication and a post-grief approach break through political apathy around climate change awareness ?

“Schmilz, schmilz, Baby!” is a thought-provoking post-grief campaign on glacier retreat by the activist artist group Aggro Climate, members of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. The initiative is one of the two winning projects of the Ars Electronica Futurelab 2024 internal ideas competition, “Futurelab Ideas Expedition”.

Based on the current best scientific estimate, alpine glaciers are expected to lose 91% of their surface area and 94% of their volume by the end of the 21st century, and in particular glaciers in Austria will have melted in the next 45 years. And even our collective best efforts won’t make a substantial difference. So instead, why not treat it as an opportunity ?

In an era where any discussion of climate change is awash with bad news for the planet, communities and ecosystems; we chose to take on an decidedly jovial and unnervingly provocative approach: asking the questions of what will we do with all these freed up land, nested in the pristine alps ?

With the backdrop of a field trip to the Pasterze, Austria’s largest glacier, we produced a tongue-in-cheek in-situ video to launch our campaign “Schmilz, schmilz Baby !”, inviting citizens to submit their ideas in a contest for the best idea of what to build on that prime real estate. And lending a helping hand to that melting effort, we added in AI-powered image generation to democratize participation.

Approach

This project was jointly led between four members of the Ars Electronica Futurelab, funded by the Futurelab itself, independently of any client work. In this research-based approach, the four of us (Denise Hirtenfelder, Nicolas Naveau, Maria Pfeifer and myself) took a joint responsibility of the underlying research, concept-making and production.

Regardless of any policy change, there will be some very large, very radical impacts caused by climate change in the coming decades (the amount of which still being possible to modulate through policies we could enact today). This is an uncomfortable truth, as it evokes guilt, fear or denial; and is a hard one to communicate as it can clash with efforts today to limit the impact.

We used a guerilla marketing-based campaign, the kind of which are associated by pre-series A startups, as well as an AI-powered contest website where people could suggest what to build in the place of the Pasterze (austria’s largest glacier) once it will have melted, in 40 years or so, complete with flashy colours and a happy vibe.