by Green Grammar Editors, 12 Dec
Blowing Up the Mountain or Blowing Up Our Imagination?
The controversy surrounding Arc’teryx’s “blown mountain” advertisement is not simply about environmental irresponsibility. More fundamentally, it lies in how the campaign reactivates a form of imagination we should have already learned to question—at both visual and narrative levels:
Power must be proven through destruction.
In the advertisement, the mountain is detonated, shattered, and violently shaken. The camera aestheticizes the moment of destruction with meticulous care. Nature is no longer understood as a complex ecological system, but reduced to an object that can be conquered, tested, and consumed. The mountain is not a subject here, but a stage; not a shared environment, but a backdrop against which human will and technological capability are displayed.
This narrative is hardly new. It inherits a deeply entrenched modernist logic: humanity confirms its own power through the conquest of nature, and proves its existence by reshaping the landscape.
The problem is that when this logic is wrapped in “artistic imagery” and the aura of a “high-end brand ethos,” it becomes even more dangerous—because it no longer appears brutal, but tasteful.
If we situate this advertisement within the contexts of art history and contemporary art, it almost reads as a textbook example of the grand narrative:
monumental scale, violent action, instantaneous eruption, irreversible consequence.
And it is precisely this obsession with the moment and with irreversibility that obscures another possibility:
the most profound changes often occur slowly, subtly, and at scales that cannot be easily documented.
When we reflect on Cai Guo-Qiang’s explosion-based practices, perhaps we should also reflect on our own habits of looking. At some point, we began to crave eye-catching headlines, spectacular effects, and artworks that are “worth photographing.” Art seems to require instant recognizability and rapid circulation in order to justify its existence.
Within this logic of spectatorship, art is either compressed into a form of immediate narrative that demands no engagement with process, or wrapped in an enormous and self-contained philosophical language. In both cases, shockbecomes the default mode.
But what happens if we step away from this explosive imagination, and turn our attention to artistic practices in which almost nothing seems to “happen”?
When Almost Nothing Happens: Nina Canell
The controversy surrounding Arc’teryx’s “blown mountain” advertisement is not simply about environmental irresponsibility. More fundamentally, it lies in how the campaign reactivates a form of imagination we should have already learned to question—at both visual and narrative levels:
Power must be proven through destruction.
In the advertisement, the mountain is detonated, shattered, and violently shaken. The camera aestheticizes the moment of destruction with meticulous care. Nature is no longer understood as a complex ecological system, but reduced to an object that can be conquered, tested, and consumed. The mountain is not a subject here, but a stage; not a shared environment, but a backdrop against which human will and technological capability are displayed.
This narrative is hardly new. It inherits a deeply entrenched modernist logic: humanity confirms its own power through the conquest of nature, and proves its existence by reshaping the landscape.
The problem is that when this logic is wrapped in “artistic imagery” and the aura of a “high-end brand ethos,” it becomes even more dangerous—because it no longer appears brutal, but tasteful.
If we situate this advertisement within the contexts of art history and contemporary art, it almost reads as a textbook example of the grand narrative:
monumental scale, violent action, instantaneous eruption, irreversible consequence.
And it is precisely this obsession with the moment and with irreversibility that obscures another possibility:
the most profound changes often occur slowly, subtly, and at scales that cannot be easily documented.
When we reflect on Cai Guo-Qiang’s explosion-based practices, perhaps we should also reflect on our own habits of looking. At some point, we began to crave eye-catching headlines, spectacular effects, and artworks that are “worth photographing.” Art seems to require instant recognizability and rapid circulation in order to justify its existence.
Within this logic of spectatorship, art is either compressed into a form of immediate narrative that demands no engagement with process, or wrapped in an enormous and self-contained philosophical language. In both cases, shockbecomes the default mode.
But what happens if we step away from this explosive imagination, and turn our attention to artistic practices in which almost nothing seems to “happen”?
When Almost Nothing Happens: Nina Canell
Perpetuum Mobile (25 kg), 2009
If you stand in front of a work by Nina Canell for the first time, you may experience a strange sensation:
it feels as though nothing is happening—yet you are certain that something is happening.
Her works rarely present a “protagonist.” There are no exaggerated forms, no clear narratives, and often no object that can be immediately photographed, shared, or summarized. What you encounter might be a length of cable, a small block of concrete, a trace of vapor, or a change so subtle it is almost unconfirmable. It is precisely within this state of “almost nothing” that Canell’s works begin to operate.
We tend to associate powerful experiences with scale: grand narratives, monumental forms, decisive gestures, clear intentions, and spectacular shapes that quickly seize the viewer’s senses. Meanwhile, what is hidden, overlooked, provisional, transient, quiet, and formally unremarkable is often excluded from attention.
Yet within a quieter and less visible lineage of contemporary art and philosophy, what truly continues to exert force is not these named “intensities,” but those forces that are barely noticed—slow, incremental, and impossible to evade.
These forces do not appear through confrontation, but through perception, the body, relationships, and time. They quietly reshape how we are connected to the world.
Interiors (Condensed), 2013
Halfway Between Opposite Ends, 2010
Born in Sweden in 1979, Nina Canell does not have a biographical narrative marked by dramatic events. It is precisely this relative lack of personal spectacle that directs her attention toward what is often overlooked: flow, transmission, residue, dissipation. She is not eager to create events; she is more concerned with how things occur.
Her works often appear as though “nothing has happened.” A cable, a trace of moisture, a seemingly static material may constitute all the visible elements of an installation. But the core of the work does not lie in these objects themselves, but in the transmissions taking place between them: electricity, temperature, humidity, vibration, time.
Canell does not understand sculpture as a finished object, but as a condition.
As she has stated:
“I don’t make objects,
I make relations.”
Within these conditions, materials affect one another while being continuously shaped by their environment. The work is no longer a result to be viewed, but a state of ongoing generation. Power is not displayed through form, but revealed through relationships.
This attention to subtle forces transforms sculpture from an object that occupies space into a mechanism that makes space perceptible.
Canell has explained that her understanding of material processes comes from two sources: reading and finding. Some materials emerge from research into the history of science, experimental literature, or fiction; others are encountered accidentally in daily life, brought into the studio, and allowed to “enter into dialogue” with other materials. She notes that both methods are valuable, but that indiscriminately gathering objects and waiting for relationships to emerge can consume enormous amounts of space and energy. She now seeks a more conscious balance between planning and chance discovery.
One of her most cited statements elaborates this position:
“Process itself is the material of my work. This means that I am not really ‘making objects,’ but working within a syntax of relations and transfers.”
Her understanding of sculpture is not about fixing materials into stable forms, but about allowing forces, transformations, energies, and relationships to occur. Although her works may have a material basis, their essence extends beyond objects into behavioral states.
Roni Horn:
When the Work Exists Like Weather
Untitled, 2013–2017
If Canell works with the micro-flows between energy and matter, Roni Horn’s practice is closer to a slow shift in perception.
Through repeated use of water, glass, language, and serial forms, Horn invites viewers to perceive subtle and continuous differences within structures that appear almost unchanged.
Born in New York in 1955, Roni Horn received rigorous artistic training early on, yet she did not develop a readily recognizable signature style. Instead, her work gradually became restrained—not lacking in power, but refusing to display power on the surface.
This restraint is closely tied to her way of living.
From the late 1970s onward, Horn repeatedly traveled to Iceland and eventually formed a long-term relationship with the place. Iceland is not a scenic choice, but an experiential one: light shifts slowly, weather is unpredictable, and landscapes appear uniform yet remain in constant flux. In Iceland, change does not manifest as an event, but through time, repetition, and subtle difference. This experience profoundly shaped her artistic language.
Horn’s works frequently involve water, glass, metal, and text, presented in clean, repetitive, even austere forms. At first glance, nothing seems to be happening. Yet if one remains with the work long enough, it becomes clear that change is not occurring in the work, but in the act of viewing.
She has spoken of her interest in difference—specifically in things that appear identical but can never be exactly repeated. This is why her works often refuse a center or a conclusion. As you move around them, shift your position, and look again, perception has already changed. The work does not demand understanding; it demands experience.
In Horn’s practice, power is never achieved through confrontation, but through sustained presence. She does not produce shock; instead, she makes you realize that you are already standing within change. Like weather—it does not need to be watched, yet it constantly affects you.
For this reason, Horn’s works resist complete documentation. Photographs can never replace bodily experience, because the work does not reside in the object, but in the continuously unfolding relationship between you and it.
Hans Haacke：
Fragile Conditions Within Systems
Blue Sail, 1964–1965
Another crucial yet often overlooked work is Hans Haacke’s Blue Sail (1964), frequently overshadowed by his later institutional critique. In Haacke’s early works involving humidity, airflow, and ecological systems, power similarly does not arise from dramatic visuals, but from the revelation of conditions. The environment ceases to be a backdrop and becomes part of the work itself.
A thin blue fabric is suspended in space. There is no motor, no mechanical apparatus, no performative action. Its sole “source of movement” is the flow of air—generated by viewers’ movements, subtle ventilation, and the space’s own conditions.
The work has no fixed form. Its state is constantly changing, but slowly, unpredictably, and without spectacle. It is neither static nor theatrical. What you witness is not a controlled gesture, but a system acutely sensitive to its environment.
Here, Haacke does not represent wind—he allows wind to become part of the work.
These works reveal that seemingly stable structures depend on a network of subtle and fragile conditions. A shift in humidity or airflow is enough to alter the entire system. Power is not centralized, but distributed across relationships.
When Art Turns Toward Minor Fluctuations
When considered together, it is difficult to say what these works assert. They seem instead to persistently evade a demand—the demand that art must produce effects, must immediately establish itself, must be rapidly understood.
In these practices, art does not become smaller; it becomes more sensitive.
It no longer rushes to occupy space, but allows space to expose itself; it no longer provides answers, but keeps relationships unresolved.
Perhaps what truly changes is not the work itself, but the way we are forced to look. When shock disappears, we begin to recognize how coarse our habitual perceptual structures have been.