Pure Waste, 2021

The video work Pure Waste, produced during a scientific expedition to a polar ice cap, documents a material reversal that inverts conventional mining. Set in North Greenland, it begins with atmospheric shots of the Arctic’s serene desolation—until a human hand enters, revealing five diamonds, which are then tossed into a glacier mill.

With this intervention, Julian Charrière aimed to symbolically repeal the anthropogenic acquisition of large masses of natural resources from the underground by extracting carbon dioxide molecules from the air itself. In an alchemical reversal of matter, these carbon molecules were then turned into dia­monds. The process for achieving this was developed by a team of scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), led by the mechanical and process engineering professor Aldo Steinfeld.

The collected carbon dioxide was then increased by including the carbon isolated from exhalations gathered from people from across the world using balloons, made particularly poignant by the politicization of breath during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The video heightens air’s intangi­bility by transforming it into diamond, the hardest naturally occurring material. In this dizzying material shift, the weightless becomes solid. By returning these diamonds to the glacier mill, Pure Waste actively engages with the polar cap, offering the minerals back in atonement. The glaciers, distant yet deeply affected by human activity, become oracles of the twenty-first century—creak­ing, melting, and demanding our attention. Yet this act of “pure waste” becomes one of reconciliation. By casting away objects of ultimate value, Charrière challenges their arbitrary worth. It is a symbolic hope that, one day, we might close the destructive cycles we so recklessly opened.


Credits
Special thanks to:
Christiane Leister, the Leister Foundation, the scientists of the
Leister Scientific Expedition around North Greenland (2021),
Søren Thor Jørgensen, Nick Nielsen, and Morten Rasch.
ETH Zurich, Aldo Steinfeld and Philipp Haueter.
NeoCoat SA and Christophe Provent.
microbEnergy GmbH and Jonas Klückers.
And a special thank you to everyone who took a deep breath to
contribute to the collective effort that is Pure Waste.