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  • AMNA NAWAZ: There's no lack of images and powerful video when it comes to the disasters

  • like wildfires or melting glaciers.

  • But a pair of artists are using those images in new ways, part of their mission to warn

  • people about what's happening too frequently to familiar landscapes.

  • Miles O'Brien has this different look at the power of fire and ice for our segment on the

  • Leading Edge.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: In a small shack in the Palm Springs Desert and a sunlit studio on a Brooklyn

  • corner, two artists are aiming their talent at an existential crisis.

  • JEFF FROST, Artist: Sometimes, people accuse me of being an alarmist.

  • And I say, that's exactly right.

  • It is time to sound the alarm.

  • Any sensible adult who's responsible in any way would be sounding the alarm right now.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: For Jeff Frost, the subject is wildfire.

  • The medium is time-lapse video art.

  • His film is "California on Fire," an intense, horrifying creation about destruction.

  • JEFF FROST: I had looked at this wildfire situation and I thought, well, here is a present-day

  • effect of climate change.

  • People tend to not react to things unless they're actually happening to them right then.

  • And I was thinking, well, this is happening right now.

  • It's definitely not a film that pulls any punches whatsoever.

  • In fact, it's full-on aggressive.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: For Zaria Forman, the mission is the same.

  • ZARIA FORMAN, Artist: Art has this very special ability to tap into people's emotions, and

  • people take action and make decisions based on their emotions more than anything else.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Her medium is pastels, and her subject is ice, vanishing ice, also a

  • story of destruction, on a different time scale, and from a different perspective.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: I choose specifically to show the beauty of these places at the forefront

  • of climate change, as opposed to the devastation that's happening, because I want people to

  • be inspired, to be moved to want to protect and preserve them.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Jeff Frost began his artistic journey here, inside abandoned houses in California's

  • Salton Sea.

  • As he embellished them with paint, he captured time-lapse images, art that is as much about

  • the process as the object.

  • JEFF FROST: On the way to one, I accidentally ran into my first wildfire out -- right out

  • here by the wind farms.

  • My artist brain just kind of exploded, and I stopped immediately and time-lapsed it all

  • night.

  • I just was looking at it, thinking, I have never seen anything like this.

  • And it was wildly exciting.

  • I want to do more.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Zaria Forman's love of distant, fragile places is inherited.

  • Her mother, Rena Bass Forman, was a fine art landscape photographer, obsessed with exploring

  • and photographing the most remote places on the planet.

  • In 2007, they traveled together to Greenland.

  • For Zaria, the ice offered inspiration, and yet also intimidation.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: I was terrified to draw ice, and I omitted it from all of my drawings.

  • It's hard.

  • It doesn't lend itself to very crisp, hard lines, specific details.

  • And especially white is one of the hardest colors to work with.

  • It doesn't blend well with other colors.

  • So, I just didn't think I was going to be capable of it, to be totally honest.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: But it was impossible to ignore this artistic sin of omission, so she eventually

  • embraced the challenge.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: And it was this big, kind of scary step, but I made my first drawing when

  • I got home, and it didn't turn out so bad.

  • And I have been doing it ever since.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Jeff Frost became equally obsessed with wildfires.

  • He started responding to the big ones.

  • JEFF FROST: The very first time I went to a fire, it was just massive level of anxiety

  • and heightened alert.

  • But, once I got used to it, it became more contemplative, and it became more strategized.

  • I would take this photo that was incredibly aesthetically beautiful, but then I would

  • feel guilty because I was happy about making a good picture.

  • And I think a lot of photojournalists probably go through this.

  • And, eventually, I compartmentalized and strategized.

  • And so, in a lot of ways, the strategy is to pull people in with that aesthetic beauty,

  • but then they're seeing something that's got a lot more depth than just the surface.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: His is constantly playing with the clock, speeding it up, slowing it down,

  • lingering on a frame.

  • JEFF FROST: If you change chronologies away from real time, what our experience of time

  • is as humans, it can give you the overview effect, which is the same kind of thing that

  • you get if you were to look at space photos from the International Space Station.

  • It sort of expands your mind into this wider view.

  • We really need that, because I don't think, in the evolution of our species, anything

  • has ever developed to give us a global instinct.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Zaria Forman has her own tale of overview.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: So, one day, I opened this e-mail that was in my inbox that read, "Dear Zaria,

  • we would love for you to come fly with us over Antarctica, love NASA."

  • (LAUGHTER)

  • ZARIA FORMAN: And I was like, what?

  • MILES O'BRIEN: It was the crew of NASA's IceBridge, which flies low-altitude sensing missions

  • over both polar regions.

  • She's flown with them several times, a new perspective on a familiar subject.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: I'm used to seeing it at the very end stage, either the face of a glacier

  • where the icebergs are calving off, or the icebergs that have already broken off and

  • are on their deathbed, essentially, until they melt completely in the ocean.

  • So, it was really interesting to get to get to fly over the ice cap, over the ice sheet,

  • and really see where all of that ice came from, and understand how it travels and how

  • it moves.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: It is the focus of her work right now.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: I want to be true to the landscape that existed at that point in time.

  • I want the viewer to have as much of a recreation of an experience that I had.

  • I want it to be real.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: The landscape depicted in "California on Fire" is grim.

  • It ripples with tension, made palpable with a throbbing soundtrack composed and performed

  • by Jeff Frost himself.

  • JEFF FROST: The most feedback from the firefighters themselves I have got is, this really makes

  • you feel like you're in the middle of a fire.

  • And you see the things that normally civilians wouldn't see.

  • This probably gets as close as you're going to get.

  • I have had a number of people thank me for essentially making something beautiful and

  • something productive and artistic out of this horror that they experienced.

  • There are moments in this where horror is beauty.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: For Zaria Forman, the horror lies in the beauty that is vanishing, melting,

  • even as she freezes it on paper.

  • ZARIA FORMAN: I think it's important to have like come at it at all different angles, you

  • know?

  • Like, we need news.

  • We need the stories.

  • We need the data from the scientists.

  • But then I think we also need beautiful images, whatever we can possibly do to change policy.

  • I mean, we're moving in the right direction, just not fast enough.

  • JEFF FROST: I can't really go into it saying like, I'm going to change the world.

  • I'm saying like, look, it would be great if this was a catalyst.

  • I think everybody has to do their thing.

  • I just feel like more like I'm doing my part, you do your part too, and you and you and

  • you and everybody else.

  • And they're all important.

  • MILES O'BRIEN: Two artists making fine art of fire and ice, beautiful, terrifying work,

  • created to evoke and provoke.

  • For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Miles O'Brien in Palm Springs and Brooklyn.

AMNA NAWAZ: There's no lack of images and powerful video when it comes to the disasters

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B1 中級 美國腔

藝術家利用火和冰的力量來塑造對氣候變化的態度。 (Artists harness the power of fire and ice to shape attitudes on climate change)

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    Yi-Jen Chang 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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