FEATURE RONI HORN
above and below: Exteriors and interior view of Vatnasafn|Library of Water, Stykkishólmur, Iceland.
Commissioned and produced by Artangel, 2007
And of course it is difficult to talk about weather (and its it. But, really, we’ve reached a point where an archive of water makes
interpenetration with human feeling) and melting glaciers without sense… a lot of the glaciers that house this water won’t exist in a decade.
addressing climate change. Long engaged with raising awareness I don’t see this project as being overtly about the environment, but on
of incipient loss in the physical sphere, Horn was given at one point one level it is… what does it mean to have static, fixed water? There’s
a weekly page in the back of Iceland’s leading newspaper, which she a terrible, real conflict there in the nature of water and what I’m doing,
filled with an archive of her photographs (“promoting self-tourism”) of preserving it… You can’t get away from politics, but the work’s predicated
ignored aspects of the country’s architecture and landscape (out-takes on a complex of things.”
from this and Horn’s other series will percolate through the Vatnasafn/ Including, in this case, deciding whether Vatnasafn/Library of
Library of Water’s website). As Iceland’s economy booms and it Water should be classed as art. In a sense Horn hopes not: the place is
continues to industrialise at a relentless pace (“bringing in some of the meant to be used, to work as an organism, not to become an equivalent
filthiest industry like aluminum plants, making dams”, sighs Horn; “their to Donald Judd’s Marfa, with limitations on admission and nightmare
idea of modernisation has basically been to mimic the downfall of other insurance premiums. “I don’t necessarily think being an artist makes
cultures”), it is one thing to draw attention to widely ignored aspects everything you do art,” she says of her richly multifarious project. “It
like its public architecture (the library Horn is using is an attractive, was a situation that appealed to me because of the interaction with the
1950s affair); it is another to broach the subject of deglaciation. audience. In my work, in terms of what you take from it, what you have
“If the archiving of water isn’t necessarily an endgame, there’s still is opportunity and possibility.” The forecast is good.
something very final about it – that we’d conceive of that as meaningful
in a given time. I don’t know if ten years ago I’d have thought of doing Vatnasafn/Library of Water opens this month
ARTREVIEW eight.lintwo.lin
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