Global

«PERPETUAL REPERCUSSION»
SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT
2008
Commissioned by KORO, Public Art Norway.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a security vault that has been excavated in the mountainside. It is designed to store up to 4.5 million different types of food seeds from all over the world. Thin volumes that are the width of the building's roof and front façade are filled with different-sized triangles made of highly reflective, acid-proof steel. In combination with other light-reflecting elements, such as prisms and dichroic mirrors, the triangles show their surroundings and the ambient light, reflecting it in all directions. The building thereby mirrors the sun and other light,according to the season and time of day. During the long polar nights other light sources take over. Signaling the position of the seed vault at all times, the light becomes a complementary opposite to the dark cave buried in the permafrost on the mountainside. There is no access to the vault for the general public.

Dyveke Sanne on the art project:
The depths of the seed vault are out of sight. Yet, its contents reflect a meaning and a complexity that affects us. From the moment we become aware of its existence, we are reminded of our own position in a global perspective and the condition of our planet. The seeds carry an obligation to the future. They are copies for a diverse landscape that demands cyclical repetition of actions, rather than continued faith in the designated original and linear progression.
The mirrored surfaces do not betray any underlying contents. They copy and reflect what they receive. Close up you can see yourself in the mirrors, further away you become part of the landscape or are blinded by the reflected light. The reflections come together and shift internally according to the position of the viewer.
"The Vault balances on a continuum between extreme points: the practical necessity and virtue of gathering and securing the world's seed diversity, and the equally negative and dreadful signal it gives off by telegraphing that this is really necessary, drawing attention to the current dangers seeds have to be protected from. George Bataille describes in The Accursed Share the way in which the gift is positive and negative at the same time, because it binds the recipient to return it with an even more valuable gift. In a way the Seed Vault is a gift to all of us, which binds us to return it with an even more significant one. It is the gift that no one wants." - Dyveke Sanne, artist of the Svalbard Seed Vault, interviewed in The Believer, Nov./Dec .’08.