Artist Roni Horn has created a beautful place in his native Iceland. He has built what is called a Library Of Water. Equal parts history, installation, and inner peace, the space serves as part research/archival center, part gallery, and part poetry.
Water, Selected is a constellation of 24 glass columns containing water collected from ice from some of the major glaciers around Iceland. The glass columns refract and reflect the light onto a rubber floor embedded with a field of words in Icelandic and English which relate to the weather – inside or outside. The sculpture installation offers a space for private reflection whilst accommodating a wide variety of community uses. In a small side room, visitors can look at Roni Horn’s ongoing series of books made in Iceland, To Place and listen to a selection of people talking about the weather. Through 2005 and 2006, at the instigation of Horn, writer Oddny Eir Ævarsdóttir, her brother archaeologist Uggi Ævarsson and their father, radio broadcaster Ævar Kjartansson interviewed around a hundred individuals from Stykkishólmur and the surrounding area about the weather. Weather Reports You presents these spoken testimonies as a collective self-portrait of a country where the weather is strongly present in everyday life.
There are also annual residency programs for writers at The Library Of Water.
Source: PSFK
