Melting Voices

Melting Voices is a long-term, site-specific artwork that envisions the Morteratsch Glacier as an active collaborator, archive, and co-author of memory. In response to Alpine transformations in the context of climate change, voices, objects, and visions from the local community are entrusted to the glacier’s movement in a sculptural time capsule.

Melting Voices is a long-term, site-specific artwork in the Alps by artist Leonard Maassen

Through field research, walks, and participatory encounters, the project fosters dialogue between people, landscape, and geological time. Combining ritual, sculpture, sound, and scientific collaboration, Melting Voices creates a space where collective memory, ecological reflection, and aesthetic experienc converge, proposing a participatory more-than-human archive of remembrance and imagination.

3D render of the glacier time capsule sculpture prototype by artist Leonard Maassen, realised in collaboration with James Grossman
Process renders of the time capsule sculpture, realised in collaboration with James Grossman


Team
Leonard Maassen – lead artist
Lisa-Marie Bosbach – visual author/production co-ordinator
Dr. Silja Zimmermann (University of Utrecht) – research advisor/workshop co-ordinator
James Grossman – technical design & realisation (sculpture)
Josh Lanham (University of Cambridge)- glaciology consultant
Lokesh Jain (University of Edinburgh) – numerical modelling consultant