The video shows a seascape deep in the frozen wilderness. Flocks of birds sweep low across a grey-blue horizon, like fleeting hieroglyphs across the screen. From the right, a man in a black suit drifts into view, carried on an ice floe, hammering furiously at the ice with a sledgehammer, snow flying with each blow. How long before the ice gives way and the man disappears into the waves?  

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But the floe keeps drifting, sliding out of frame to the left.

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— only for the hammer-wielding figure to reappear again from the right (when played in loop).

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Based in Svalbard, Stein Henningsen is a performance and visual artist whose work has been presented at international biennials, festivals, and art events worldwide since 2005. Henningsen constructs performances as living images, bringing body, landscape, and elemental forces together in concentrated visual poetry. His practice confronts climate, political, social, and financial systems through precise conceptual actions. With a background in engineering and international marketing, he brings analytical rigor to an experimental practice. Living in the High Arctic, his current work addresses the climate crisis through realities witnessed firsthand in a landscape where global change becomes immediate and visible.