Far Before and After Us. Golta

Stefano Cagol’s video work, “Far Before and After Us. Golta” (2022), sought a confrontation with the most ancient geological eras of the Earth, reflecting the transience of the human and shifting the anthropocentric look to an ecological balance.

The artist reached the Golta island, located along the rugged western coastal area of Norway, where metamorphic rocks of magmatic origin emerged from the Earth's crust from great depths, dating back to the Precambrian, and the initial formation and evolution of continents.

There, on the limit between the island and the sea at the time of the summer solstice with the late-night sun, the artist staged a fire ritual as a shaman, being alone on the island. He ignited the dark rocks with the light of an SOS red flare, like incandescent lava in his hands, before returning to the tiny human presence in the face of the grandeur of nature. 

The artist’s solitude marks also the technical realization of the work as he performed and filmed by himself, managing a drone remote control with one hand and a flare with the other. 

The video is part of Stefano Cagol’s ongoing Arctic research around the balance between humans and the environment, which started in 2010, and responds to his method of working in mystical solitude. 

- Stefano Cagol