3rd Annual Downtown Ice & Fire Carnival artistic team lays the groundwork for the coming edition
In the winter of 2007 a unique cultural event, The Ice and Fire Carnival: Spirit of Place, will be staged in Victoria Park, Regina. An exhibition of snow sculptures will reflect upon this year’s theme - Spirit of Place – a vital connection to place in maintaining both the health of the community and an exploration of immediate geography and community inRegina. Victoria Park is situated in the heart of downtown. Because of its central location and heritage buildings, it is often chosen as a site for public rallies, celebratory events, street busking and casual public assembly.
The Ice and Fire Carnival: Spirit of Place explores the exciting structures that result when artists experiment with building in snow & ice. Each project will be large scale: they'll be freestanding with a footprint of approximately eight square feet, and up to eight feet high. In addition to being made of arctic elements such as snow and ice artists can include light and traditional art media as well as other architectural materials. Spirit of Place will open with a press viewing during February 2007. Weather permitting the sculptures will remain on display through March 2007.
Spirit of Place, curated by Elizabeth Matheson, the Dunlop Art Gallery, will address the relations between culture and public historic places such as Victoria Park. The curatorial approach will be to select work through discussions with invited artists with the objective of creating a collaboration of works that relate and inform each other. The curatorial role is to encourage artists to consider the relationship of their work to the spirit of place (knowledge and relationship to our immediate environment), the landscape features and the history of the site.
What does it mean to live and work at this point in time in this place? What is our sense of place, for a province that in the past was divided and segregated by former colonial policies? What are the new identities that are starting to emerge as our urban areas transform with migrations of people coming and going? Artists have reflected on and imaged Saskatchewan for many years, particularly in the early twentieth century through representations of the land as a real and imagined places. But what has replaced these images of the past as the current portrait of our city? And how do these issues pertaining to the politicization of the land, lived experiences and new identities reflect our current zeitgeist?
For the past two decades, artists have been responding to these questions by reflecting on the meaning of place experience through historical references, personal narratives and lived experiences that compel the viewer to consider past colonial tensions, new identities and ideological constructs. Engaged with the past and present, artists often re-present the land and explore the sense of history and experience with a particular place, and bring a deep commitment to understanding place and highlight the corresponding links emerging in a post-colonial Saskatchewan.
The magnificent 1926 Cenotaph in Regina's Victoria Park will soon have some company again in February, as the 3rd Annual Downtown Ice & Fire Carnival gets under way in Regina.
The Ice and Fire Carnival: Spirit of Place explores the exciting structures that result when artists experiment with building in snow & ice. Each project will be large scale: they'll be freestanding with a footprint of approximately eight square feet, and up to eight feet high. In addition to being made of arctic elements such as snow and ice artists can include light and traditional art media as well as other architectural materials. Spirit of Place will open with a press viewing during February 2007. Weather permitting the sculptures will remain on display through March 2007.
Spirit of Place, curated by Elizabeth Matheson, the Dunlop Art Gallery, will address the relations between culture and public historic places such as Victoria Park. The curatorial approach will be to select work through discussions with invited artists with the objective of creating a collaboration of works that relate and inform each other. The curatorial role is to encourage artists to consider the relationship of their work to the spirit of place (knowledge and relationship to our immediate environment), the landscape features and the history of the site.
What does it mean to live and work at this point in time in this place? What is our sense of place, for a province that in the past was divided and segregated by former colonial policies? What are the new identities that are starting to emerge as our urban areas transform with migrations of people coming and going? Artists have reflected on and imaged Saskatchewan for many years, particularly in the early twentieth century through representations of the land as a real and imagined places. But what has replaced these images of the past as the current portrait of our city? And how do these issues pertaining to the politicization of the land, lived experiences and new identities reflect our current zeitgeist?
For the past two decades, artists have been responding to these questions by reflecting on the meaning of place experience through historical references, personal narratives and lived experiences that compel the viewer to consider past colonial tensions, new identities and ideological constructs. Engaged with the past and present, artists often re-present the land and explore the sense of history and experience with a particular place, and bring a deep commitment to understanding place and highlight the corresponding links emerging in a post-colonial Saskatchewan.
The magnificent 1926 Cenotaph in Regina's Victoria Park will soon have some company again in February, as the 3rd Annual Downtown Ice & Fire Carnival gets under way in Regina.
As you can imagine, planning an event like this requires a lot of energy from volunteers and time commitment from the artists who make it all possible.
Recruiting sponsors whose generate support pays for the art itself, the wodden forms; the loading of the snow into the boxes for the sculptures; the clearing of the path along which the procession will take place; and the facilities we use during the lantern-making activities and others.
One of the first task the creative team engages in is the establishment of the procession's path and positioning of the planned snow sculptures in Victoria Park, along with that of other "stages".
This year's theme for the Carnival is Spirit of Place. It has been specially curated by a team from the Dunlop Art Gallery.
The "walking of the path" is a key moment for the artistic team members who for the first time get a sense of how the Carnival will shape into the type of placemaking the citizens of Regina will derive undiscovered meaning from over the next few weeks.
posted by Claude-Jean Harel, MA MAHI @ 10:22 AM
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