Julian Charrière: Towards No Earthly Pole

Ever since his artistic beginnings, Julian Charrière has been exploring changing nature and the role humans play in it. In the cinematic work Towards No Earthly Pole, he combines different ice landscapes of our planet into a sensual, poetic universe. The work relates to the current climate crisis through subjective engagement with the particular topography of glacial landscapes and the historical figure of the artist as adventurer, investigator, and explorer. Charrière traveled with his team to some of the most inhospitable areas on Earth to realize the film—exhibited at MASI Lugano, Aargauer Kunsthaus, and the Dallas Museum of Art among other photographs, videos, and artworks—which questions the notions and images of nature. The artist appeals to our capacity to marvel at the world and encourages us to look for knowledge and be overwhelmed by the wonders of nature.

The publication features exclusively JJannon. The texts are in both English and German and set at the same size, in the same weight, the only difference being their alignment (left vs. right flush). Flipping through the publication, the text columns slowly drifts in the opposite direction, till they swap sides, a subtle reference to the movement and melting of icebergs. Stanley Kubrick’s black monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey has been used as a reference for the appearance of the book, which features an elongated shape and flaps that wraps around the fore edge creating a second spine and the illusion of a single block. The book is made of two volumes, separated at the center by a concertina fold landscape image.

Edited by Dehlia Hannah
Texts by Francesca Benini, Amanda Boetzkes, Anna Katherine Brodbeck, Dehlia Hannah, Scott MacKenzie & Anna Westerstahl Stenport, Shane McCorristine, Nadim Samman, Katrin Weilenmann, and a conversation between Julian Charrière, Dehlia Hannah, and Konrad Steffen

Mousse Publishing, 2020
306 pages
Softcover with Swiss binding, 17×28.5 cm
ISBN 9788867494347