| The fifth volume of the T+U cultural theory zine entitled ICE aims to describe our contemporary techno-cultural conditions by exploring the semantic ecology of certain thermodynamic metaphors relating to cooling, freezing, ice-formation, crystallization, and, obversely, warming and melting. This metaphorological examination also refers to Arnold Gehlen who, in his text entitled On Cultural Crystallization, claims that we have arrived at a posthistorical era where modern culture has passed into a crystalline state. The vision of frozen history refers to a new cultural Ice Age where the production of goods stops while every previous form of knowledge is hibernated. However, within the heart of this frozen post-historical deceleration, fatal forms of acceleration are also proliferating. Toxic perfluorinated acids used in making Teflon or Gore-Tex layers are now traceable in the Devon Ice Cap. Radioactive elements created by nuclear testings can be detected in Arctic ice core samples. These are signs that the Anthropocene thought is also a historical paradigm shift, in which previous cultural and geological concepts of time are transcended. |
