Twelve immense blocks of ice, harvested from free-floating icebergs, are on their way to Paris from Greenland. <\/p>\n
Packed in freezer containers normally used to ship shrimps, the blocks will be arranged in a clock formation on the Place du Panthéon, where they will poignantly melt away – as leaders try to thrash out a deal to curb climate change.<\/p>\n
Ice Watch Paris<\/i><\/a> – the joint creation of an Icelandic-Dutch artist and geologist from Greenland – is imagined as a way of making the fragility and decay of the Arctic tangible. “You stand in front of the ice, and then you can touch it ….You'll see children hugging it, even tasting it,” says Olafur Eliasson, the artist best known for creating a rising sun in London Tate’s Turbine Hall<\/a>.<\/p>\n Each block weighs about 10 tonnes – the equivalent of 20 male polar bears – and is a tenth of what melts every second during the Greenland summer.<\/p>\n The installation has shifted venue from the Place de la République – where flowers and tributes have been placed in memory of the 130 people killed by recent terrorist attacks in the French capital – and empty shoes<\/a> have been left out to replace the cancelled climate march.<\/p>\n Ahead of the December 3 opening, chinadialogue <\/i>spoke to co-creator and geologist Minik Thorleif Rosing, who grew up in Greenland and whose research in the region dated the origin of life on Earth to several hundred million years earlier than previously thought.<\/p>\n