RONI HORN (1955-)
Sited in a converted library building on a promontory overlooking the ocean in the town of Stykkishólmur on the west coast of Iceland, VATNASAFN / LIBRARY OF WATER incorporates many of Roni Horn’s abiding artistic concerns with water and weather, reflection and illumination, and the fluid nature of identity.
Twenty-four glass columns containing water from glaciers around Iceland refract and reflect the day into a rubber floor embedded with words used to describe weather, inside or out. VATNASAFN / LIBRARY OF WATER also offers a space for community gatherings, a studio for writers, and it houses an oral archive of weather reports gathered from people who live in and around Stykkishólmur.
This book surveys the interconnecting elements of Roni Horn’s long-term project on the island through a series of image sequences and texts. It also includes a selection of writings by the artist inspired by her experience of being in Iceland.
Stykkishólmur (coincidentally the very same place where the first regular monitoring of meteorological conditions in Iceland was undertaken by Árni Thorlacius in 1845.) The selection of water is housed, transparent and still, in a constellation of glass columns which flow through the interior, reflecting and refracting the light outside and illuminating the interior as it becomes dark. The collection of weather reports has been published as a book, is being serialised in the national daily newspaper Morgunblaðið, and will continue to grow in the years to come.
All of this of course necessitated journeys and meetings of many different kinds; a coalition of people in Iceland energised by Horn’s secular vision for a place of enlightenment. They were drawn into the magnetic field of Horn’s project from Stykkishólmur and the Snæfellsness Peninsula, from Reykjavík, London, New York and elsewhere. The realisation of the different elements of the project has needed the involvement of many people in Iceland and beyond. A chess grandmaster and a team of specialist glass-makers, ice collectors and weather reporters, writers and water consultants, the town council and the national parliament, advocates and supporters from many different parts of the world: people who talk about the weather in Iceland to people who make the weather there.
Not far from Stykkishólmur is the volcano of Snæfellsjökull where Jules Verne’s fictional travellers began their journey to the centre of the earth. In one of her many pieces of writing inspired by the experience of Iceland, Horn stated “I come to this island to get at the very centre of the world."
VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER offers a new centre on the edge of this remarkable island.
One stage in the journey is complete. VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER is open, to anyone, at the time of their choosing, on their own, or with others. With this openness, the next stage of the journey is just beginning.
