MAIN ATTRACTION-QINGDAO, 2015
Video, 5 minutes

Spotlight on. Peak. Fall. Roll. Stroke. Turn. Stroke. Rinse. Rise. Repeat. Treading...horizontally. Aimlessly. Repetitiously. Lap number unquantifiable. Tap, tap, tap on the glass barrier. 

The ‘do not tap’ sign goes unnoticed. Flashes. Selfies. More selfies. Another...this one with a 2-finger peace-sign salute and head tilt. Repeat. She fails to notice or alter her rhythm in her painted concrete, chlorine retreat. So many visitors come to see the star of the show – the same as yesterday, the day before and the one before that. Rinse. Rise. Repeat.

The polar bear - the world’s largest and fiercest land predator, used to be emblematic of the cold. But today, it is a symbol of warmth. Images of polar bears, such as Arne Naevra’s Polar Meltdown (2007) of a polar bear teetering on a small piece of ice, have been photographed, illustrated, produced, reproduced, misappropriated, circulated and re-circulated-continuously with minimal contest or understanding of the effect.
As the atmosphere inches toward a potential +2 ̊C temperature increase, the polar bear as a ubiquitous icon of climate change has prevailed and now peaked. Main Attraction is a video, a part of an ongoing project, that explores the problematics of selecting this animal from a specific geographic region to represent a global phenomenon, one that is highly complex and human.