in praise of fails
TL; DR: 30-foot art done-30° (“The Window” winterlude)
The newly frozen bay, somewhat snow white, sounds out as it warps — ringing, and singing, like an ice siren, alarm and allure. I jump, stomp, and kick down while walking onto this winter canvas. I’m holding a broom sideways — if I fall through, maybe it’ll save me. Should I be wearing a life jacket?
Every December I make enormous weatherworks. The process is physically demanding — a duel, a sport, a dance — due to the difficult conditions (which are different every year). This art is always in cooperation with acquiescent to nature; i.e. this year, for the first time in ten, there is no ice. So “going-with-the-no-floe”, I shifted my colordrifts and glyphs to nearby snowy fields and frozen flora. But because the art is not at the time-honoured site, and I can only work at a much smaller size… all attempts are fails. (F1-F4):
Scaling-down is the opposite of what I want to do at this point — haboobs of blue and fuchsia blasted out by snow machines onto gargantuan Gstaad mountain slopes… would be the way I’d like to go.
So I watch the soft water, ice pining. Days pass. The above modest mild-weather-fails get made. A week goes. Then another. It rains, drizzles, pours, showers, sprinkles, and every other synonym for dull drops falling from a slate-grey sky.
Then suddenly, two days before we leave, the temperature plummets. The bay freezes. A day after that, a beneficent Mother Nature gessoes it with snow.
6 am. Standing on the shore. Day of departure. Tweny below zero. The fishermen, always a safety augur, aren’t out on the ice. (Should I…) Go out, holding a broom like I’m a tightrope walker. I listen for ice cracks, squint at the bright sun. Scan the far clouds, calculate the close shadow paths. The wind scours the snow, sandblasts my cheeks. I take off a glove, shoot a test photo. Fingers freeze in seconds. I drag step my boot — at least this year I didn’t have to duct tape wood blocks to my feet — to test the snow depth. Shallow. Drop to my knees. The rippled ice hurts even through my kneepads (and snow pants, and pants). 5 hours to not fail. (Why try?). With an upside-down funnel in each hand, I shape the snow fast as I can. I look like an over-caffeinated lunatic crab.
I make snow mounds into the distance. The wind is so strong that by the time I’m done the last one it has shaped the first mounds into mini Bilbao-esque buttes and hoodoos. I lug out a couple big rocks and long tree branches and shove them around to somewhat channel the wind’s sculpting, then hustle out my 40 lb box of powders and cups and sifters. My snot is going to be purple: I choke a little on the reds and blues I inhale as I open the bags and prep. The wind gale steals the first thrown drifts of color, dispersing them a hundred feet long, to gone, so I have to work closer. And faster. Even so, the snow dunes erode as I paint them; it’s like watching a time-lapse film, shot from a satellite, of an apocalyptic psychedelic Antarctic. I take some photos before the shapes disappear completely. Fingers fucking freezing. Phone buzzes. Time to go.
Well. Didn’t fall through. Did I fail through? Same conundrum, ad infinitum. My epitaph. (Everyone’s?)
Go on. Get on the ice. Go on.
A few random weatherworks, previous years:
NOTES: (awful snow fossils and so on
- more weatherworks art by K.I.A.: CLICK HERE
- this post’s equation: Weatherworks = Andy Goldsworthy + Wolfgang Laib + Katharina Grosse x Rothko x Robert Smithson + (Futura 2000 x Koji Kakinuma) ÷ holi festival
- over the “waiting weeks”, whilst on the fields, I tried changing it up: used my body, first doing some Cueva de las Manos-ish art, my hand as stencil on the snow — but way too cold. Then I tried multi-armed embeds of my body (to enblue), but they ended up less like Yukon-inspired Yves Klein imprints, or subarctic Matisse cut-outs, and more like awful snow fossils of the goddess Kali, only with parka wrinkles.
-Matisse said of his cut-outs “An artist must never be a prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation, prisoner of success…" Yeah, pls. add prisoner of weather.
- every year the weather has helped me paint (one year even melting, mixing colours, then freezing for me, for a far better work), but this was the first time it has sculpted. fodder for future years…
- the prints of the works have ambiguous perspectives, uncertain scales, and little context, on purpose (though collectors and curators seem to like to see a horizon); however, there are little details like leaves or animal tracks for the observant to note.
- I lean digital even in my analog work — I use discrete bits to create larger images, paintings and installations (often recombinant) and I like linear glitches. In the weatherworks, the snowflakes or ice crystals are akin to pixels, as is each speck of coloured powder or ash, and I create the disrupted lines in the land art by balancing on wooden boards or cardboard, using thems as stencils. (The cardboard also ‘melts’ the surface by compression, changing the appearance in that area, a gaussian blur just like a photoshop filter). And of course the final artworks are photographs (using pixels) that are brought into the physical world when printed (via thousands of discrete coloured dots).
PREVIOUS POSTS:
Berst of 23 (and a second after)
BONUS IMAGE:
A fall....but Not a fail! Wonderful!