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SNOW JOB (p. 3 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | JAN

Fung is fascinated by the medium itself, still largely unexplored in serious art. There are interesting issues of light quality and life cycle that pertain to few other media. "Weather is such a factor," he says. "And the material is so fluid. It changes hourly. It might look like the artists’ plans or drawings for only an hour, maybe a week."

Those very difficulties, Fung says, are what make the project a rich metaphor for a world in desperate need of friendly, creative collaboration in the face of seemingly intractable problems. The multidisciplinary, international teams may not be completely familiar with each other’s work. But they’re learning fast, says Fung. They have to. Snow and ice are such unforgiving, unpredictable media that constant consultation and on-the-fly changes are essential. "Snow," he says, "is all about collaboration."

Canadians Lise Anne Couture and Hani Rashid of the New York-based architecture firm Asymptote collaborated with Finnish artist Osmo Rauhala to create Absolute Zero: A Lighthouse of Temporality for last February’s preview. The work is made of snow and somehow suggests two igloos wandering off in opposite directions, dragging their skirts behind them as they go. The interiors feature a rotating glass device cleverly projecting an ice-skating video onto the snow walls. Rashid explains: "We’ve built in glass and steel and pixels, and now in snow. With this piece, we started doing things that snow doesn’t really want to do, but we’re happy to be guinea pigs and pave the way for the whole process next year."

Will the show make a go of snow? Next month when media previews begin we’ll know, as two rather obscure towns in Finnish Lapland make an international splash with one of the oldest building substances known to man. As Rashid says, "There’s a pleasure in understanding [snow] as both natural and artificial, to take this material that has been used for centuries and come back with it in contemporary times."

Snow as metaphor for our rapidly changing world and the ways we can work together to better it. Can you ever look at that snow-filled driveway in quite the same way again? [ ]

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1 | 2 | 3 | JAN