Roni Horn's ongoing project: a collection of stories about the weather in Iceland from Icelandic people. I am interested in how other artists think about weather in their work. Since my travels to New Zealand in '06 and '07, one of their coldest and windiest springs and summers in 60 years, I began to reflect on wind as a metaphor for conditions of change and also started to collect their weather maps. Since then I have continued to collect maps from places I visited (Iceland examples below). And last year I also started a list of Icelandic words that qualify the differing conditions of wind. This year I added a few to the list.
vindur- wind
stormur - heavy wind
rok - hard wind
moldrok - strong wind with earth
sandrok - strong wind with sand
fárviðri - crazy wind, tempest, typhoon
gola - breeze
gjóla - medium breeze
hvassviðri - strong breeze
logn - no wind
andvari - breath
kaldi - a cold chilly breeze
stinningskaldi - ice cold wind
fellibylur - hurricane
hnúkaÞeyr - warm mountain wind flowing from south to north
norðangarri - cold north to south wind
sunnanblær - southern breeze
gustur - gust of wind
austankaldir - east cold wind
hvasst - medium strong wind
strekkingur - medium wind
blástur - blast "It is blowing/windy."
hvirfilvindur - tornado
sviptivindur - sudden strong winds, common around steep mountains
staðvindur - trade winds common to a region
skafrenningur - wind that blows loose snow; piles of snow result
snjostormur - wind storm with snow
The weather maps above recorded the changing weather conditions every three hours on July 27th, the last day of our trip. I love the simplicity of the design -- the way that the arrows describe the weather patterns and express the tensions of change. Something to consider. How might I use arrows to express changing tensions of shaping, making, unmaking? I've been wanting to make a book on this topic - maybe one with only arrows?
A Wind Report from Iceland: (From a conversation taken from facebook this morning, Aug 5)
22 miles per hour winds. The residency windows are rattling. It is also making a deep base sound on the northern side of the building.
Watch a horror movie.
Fall approaches.
Did you see the auroras?
No.
No way.
I saw them around 2 and called the farm. Of course they were up and out to look.
But I'm not at the farm anymore!
Can't be everywhere!
But I can watch weather reports from anywhere!