The Snow Show - a singular cultural project
Absolute Zero: A Lighthouse of
Temporality, 2003
"It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome, with caves of ice!"

So wrote Coleridge of Kubla Khan's unconventional edifice, when was it, sometime in the 18th century. What follows here may not live up to the poem's menace and mystique but read on anyway.

The Snow Show does at least promise to be a remarkable cultural event that will bring together internationally recognized artists and architects to design collaborative installations using snow and ice as their primary materials.

In the winter of 2004 these designs will be translated into an outdoor exhibition presenting fifteen unique constructions of significant scale and beauty. The spectacle will be staged jointly in the towns of Kemi and Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, the country's most northerly province.

The curators of the Snow Show, and the main minds behind it, are New York independent curator Lance Fung together with the director of the Rovaniemi Art Museum Hilkka Liikkanen, both in cooperation with colleagues in Kemi and Rovaniemi. The exhibition will be open to the public from February 12 to March 31, 2004.

The philosophy
Speaking about the artistic principles that underpin the Snow Show, project coordinator Tuula Yrjölä explains that rarely do art and architecture have a chance to meet in an environment that does not favour either discipline. The Snow Show brings an eclectic group of artists and architects together, challenging them to work in a neutral, ephemeral material. The attraction for many of the distinguished participants in the project is in this collaborative premise. For others, it is the uncertainty and excitement of working with the natural element of water in its surprisingly varied frozen forms.
http://www.arkitera.com/spotlight.php?action=displaySpotlight&ID=26&aID=160
http://virtual.finland.fi/finfo/English/topical/snowshow.html