Fish & the hermitage, St. Petersburg – Diptych

Chris in the UK paints frolicking fish. Connecting climate science, art and heritage. Fred of Geneva, inspired by life, writes poems about Chris’s painting. Used as visual art, on a decal, poems accompany the painting. Amplifying the painting’s story: the impact of rising sea levels on private life and heritage, climate change consequences, disrupting our certitudes. For which there are no vaccines.

Fish & The Hermitage, St. Petersburg – Diptych

Meier et al., (2004) claim, flooding is not uncommon in St Petersburg’s past; rising sea levels threaten the Baltic. On the shores of which sits St Petersburg, home to the Hermitage Museum, a building on the UNESCO World Heritage List. Rising sea level science intersects with heritage, in art, which submerges the Hermitage, a surreal scene. The surreal is embedded in climate scientist visions.

Incline

In the tide’s balancing act
when sea enters land
and the coast capsizes its salt water treasures,
from this dance, this coming and going
is born breadth united with sand creating life.

The evolution in these unspeakable swirls
carries its apocalypse under the stars,
a monument of clay deposited in the wind
thought in the hands of time, a passage,
a crackling spark in the fire of the universe.

Inclinaison

Dans le balancement de la marée
quand entre la mer dans la terre,
quand la côte chavire ses trésors d’eau salée,
dans cette danse d’allers et de retours,
naît le souffle unit au sable qui fabrique la vie;

L’évolution dans ses remous inénarrables
transporte sous les étoiles son apocalypse,
monument d’argile déposé dans le vent
pensée dans les aiguilles de l’horloge, passage,
un craquement d’étincelle dans le feu de l’univers.