Iceage Daydream

“Dear architects of Cliostraat…” the invitation arrived out of the blue about a year ago, and was not something you could turn down.

It regarded creating a small project in Sestriére on occasion of the forthcoming Winter Olympics, in collaboration with an artist, whose identity was not revealed in the invitation. A kind of blind date installation. All in snow.

It is a tried and tested formula: a collaboration between artists and architects in an intentionally neutral medium. The common material is water in its various states, and there is a close bond with the surrounding nature. A work destined (we hope) to last a couple of months before inevitably melting in the first sunshine of spring.

Seven artist/architect duos create a corresponding number of works using snow.
A short while later Lance Fung (American collector and gallery owner, creator and curator of The Snow Show) gave us the name of the artist who will be working with us, Paola Pivi. We have never met her, but we immediately recalled some of her works, the upside-down aeroplane at the Biennale, the ostriches in Alicudi, the zebras in the Gran Sasso park…
We began by inspecting the golf course at Sestrière, the venue for the seven installations.

In March, despite the heat, the snow was still waist-high in places. We walked in single file, imagining huge soft forms forging a rapport with the natural world, and after a few attempts we found the right spot, a group of firs, up to twenty metres high, standing in a white carpet of virgin snow.

The preparations were at fever pitch, and alongside us the diggers in the Olympic building sites worked continuously. With this weather the snow would soon start to melt in February, and this worried everyone considerably….so no ice, which would melt too quickly, we would use compacted snow to try and slow the process down…and no horizontal floors, which would be too dangerous, so everything out in the open air.
The weather factor, with its irreversible changes, usually of marginal importance for both artists and architects, is a key player in the project.

The works on show will therefore be the result of much thought, and of large and small compromises, a case of creative talent working to strict rules.