ARDEN SURDAM
POLARTS
PolArts,2026-2027
ProHelvetia x Swiss Polar Institute
Selected tandems 2026
Arden Surdam / Ewa Poniecka
Living Archive of the Third Pole: Cryoconite Holes
The collaboration between Arden Surdam (PhD Candidate ZHdK, Artist and Researcher) and Ewa Poniecka (EPFL, River Ecosystems Laboratory) brings together artistic practice and cryospheric research (the study of the parts of the Earth’s surface where water exists in frozen form).
The tandem shifts attention toward the micro-scale dynamics of glacier surfaces through cryoconite holes — small, water-filled depressions that host complex microbial communities and play an active role in glacial surface transformation. Artistically, the collaboration builds on contemporary approaches to photography which underscore non-representation and material witnesses. Within this framework, cryoconite holes are understood as patterned, living surfaces rather than visual motifs.
‘By working within both disciplines and alongside one another, we aim to underscore the analogy between the fields in their processes and scales, approaching glaciers not as distant monuments but as dynamic, living surfaces.’ (Arden Surdam / Ewa Poniecka)
LABORATORIO LAGUNA
Laboratorio Laguna, 2023-2027
Artistic PhD
Studiert Doktoratsprogramm Transdisciplinary
Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK)
Occhio (2025) is a site-specific sculpture installed in the Venetian Lagoon in collaboration with the Artistic PhD working group Laboratorio Laguna. The work consists of a 360° security mirror elevated on three carbon fiber tripod legs, stabilized with beach umbrella ground spikes and tensioned hemp ropes. Italian for eye, the artwork functions as a suspended, observing body—an optical instrument that simultaneously surveils and distorts. By relocating photographic production outside the camera and into the landscape itself, the work engages ongoing PhD research into material image-making, ecological agency, and the instability of vision within dynamic environments.
Fabricated as a maquette and installed on a barena—a tidal salt marsh shaped by shifting sediment and water flows—the sculpture operates as both apparatus and image-making device. The convex mirror produces continuously shifting, spherical reflections of the surrounding lagoon, compressing horizon, sky, water, and bodies into a single, unstable visual field.
These “photographs” are not captured but generated in real time, contingent on tidal rhythms, wind, light, and the movement of human and nonhuman actors. The work resists fixed composition or authorship; instead, it foregrounds an expanded photographic condition in which the image is co-produced by environmental forces.