Cold Cases

“Cold Cases” explore the politics of ‘cold’ through a series of cases and contexts in which the differential experiences and effects of temperature are entangled with legal questions, human rights violations, but also claims for social and environmental justice. Ice is universally recognized as under considerable threat by global warming and in urgent need of practices of care and preservation. Temperature is often ‘naturalized’ as an ambient environmental condition beyond human control when it comes to accounting for the production of harm and violence against bodies within cold contexts. Through the analysis of a series of contemporary as well as historic ‘cold cases’ the project explores the strategic role of temperature and speculates about the emergence of a new thermo-politics defined by cold. Temperature becomes a register of violence; one that includes the legacies of climate colonialism, longstanding socio-economic inequalities, and ongoing structural racism. “Cold Cases” videos invite viewers to reflect upon the ethical imaginaries implicit in the conjoined term ‘just-ice’ and by extension the experiential valence of temperature as it both interacts with and is instrumentalized by institutions, bodies, materials, and environments.