Ice Boat

Abstract

Some works of art, particularly when developed across multiple forms, knowledge forms, timeframes, and disciplinary configurations, are particularly challenging to responsibly describe, categorize, or position. These challenges are further complicated when the core material articulation of complex long-term project remains forthcoming. Although Ice Boat has been an active project since 2013—and accordingly, already manifest as a materially exuberant world of related works, models, prototypes, photographic tests, video, permissions, endorsements, risk assessments—the core public sculptural event is still becoming. Within the context of a book exploring the situatedness of art, this work’s remote location, its complex imbrication in contested and unresolved histories, and its multiple states of prototypal and versioned existence, all exemplify the problem of art’s whereness. As Ice Boat melts over the course of a month, it tilts toward the heat of the sun, following its arc across the sky and reforming into a “sea” of water. This process will regenerate the land and leave a footprint of brilliant flowers in the boat’s wake, to bloom readily for seasons to come.