About Frozen in Time and Space
Frozen in Time and Space is a large-scale interactive installation built from 16,000 cryostraws. These are the tubes in which sperm, egg cells and embryos of humans and animals are stored. Together they form a rigid, clinical grid that makes tangible the hidden systems behind cryopreservation: the controlling, archiving and instrumentalising of life. On each straw, an individual existence is reduced to a name, a code and a short description. At the same time, that life disappears into an anonymous whole.
Visitors are invited to disrupt the system by taking straws and rearranging them within the wall, giving rise to a new visual composition. What begins as a personal act gradually exposes a broader logic about how we classify and value life. Which lives do we consider worth preserving, who gets to decide, and what does it mean to reduce life to data?
Frozen in Time and Space was developed in collaboration with UMC Utrecht, Utrecht University and Wageningen University & Research.
