The
Snow Show is a unique cultural project that brings together internationally
recognised artists and architects to design collaborative installations using
snow and ice as their primary materials. In the winter of 2004 these designs were
built into an outdoor exhibition that presents a dozen unique constructions. The Snow Show was curated by New York
independent curator Lance Fung together with the director of the Rovaniemi Art
Museum Hilkka Liikkanen and in cooperation with the cities of Kemi and
Rovaniemi. The exhibition was open
to the public from 12. February through 31. March, 2004 in Kemi and Rovaniemi,
Finland.
The
collaborative team of architects Diller+Scofidio and artist John Roloff installed
for The Snow Show, Pure Mix, an
approximately 1000 sq. ft. field or mosaic of frozen designer water
"implants" cast into the sea ice of the Kemi harbour. Each element of the grid is a .75 meter
x .75 meter x .33 meter space cut into the harbor ice filled with a specialty/designer
water from different international sources, Perrier, Avion, Iranian water,
Catholic Church, etc., and allowed to freeze in place temporarily entombed
until the spring thaw when the commercialized waters would return back to
nature. Routed into the surface
ice of each frozen specimen and filled with snow was each brandŐs commercial logo.
In the case of snow accumulation on the mosaic, viewers were able to discover
the logos with brooms and layout guides provided on site further evoking the
theme of domestication of nature.
Designer
waters, through a process of extraction, immersion and ultimately mixing into
the sea become a link between
culture and nature and the project site to the external world. Further allusions are made to
purity and contamination of identity and branding; geographical, political, and
social mixing; the absurdity of water connoisseurship, climate as an
architectural property and the deconstruction of commodity systems.
More
information about The Snow Show is available at: http://www.thesnowshow.net