Ice Breakers

by Charles Stewart
Series: Ice Breakers, 2017

Ice Breakers

This piece is intended to be viewed and performed live. Each photo depicts the second before a tragic moment in the lives of the characters involved. The prints themselves freeze this moment but to greater the understanding of the severity and trauma, each print was additionally frozen into a block of ice. This represent the mind of the victims stopping the moment in their minds not wanting or being able to process or get passed the moment. The performance came as each of the characters live acted upon the blocks in different ways to free the picture and unfreeze the moment in their minds.

Image 1:

    Scene: A women walks into her home. Slightly distracted by her mail; she is frozen a second before she discovers the body of a loved one after they have committed suicide.

    Performance: The women slowly removes the photo from the ice block with a heat gun as the drip run off into a tin pan. Finally she folds the photo and places it into her pocket.

Image 2:

    Scene: A man is showering in his home when his girlfriend walks into the bathroom. Through the fog of the glass he doesn't notice the knife she wields. This is a second before he is attacked by someone he loved and trusted. (His appearance in the performance proves he survives)

    Performance: The man quickly and aggressively removes the photo from the block using a hammer. The ice shatters and scatters across the floor. He then rips up and casts away the pieces.

Image 3:

    Scene: A driver coast across a dimly lit road, her face illuminated by a message on her phone. Engrossed by her phone she fails to notice a pedestrian walking his dog and time freezes before the fatal accident.

    Performance: The driver takes the ice block. Rather than freeing the photo she replaces it into a cooler and pours even more ice atop of it before she zips and closes the cooler. After which she carries away the heavy cooler.