In 2002, when I was living in Stockholm, I heard about the ice hotel in the north of Sweden, and curious about the idea I took the overnight train to Kiruna.
The experience was interesting and disturbing.
The Ice hotel is an ephemeral artistic creation. It doesn’t survive the summer as it starts melting when the temperature increases. During the winter the cold renders a beautiful crystal blue colour to the ice to the frozen water streams.
Someone had the idea of inviting artists from around the world to sculpt the ice in order to build a hotel. If you have been wondering it is actually possible to sleep in the hotel rooms; and they are quite popular as I noticed at the time of my visit.
This all sounds interesting, but what really disturbed me was to acknowledge the fact that all the creativity and time employed during the winter to create a stunning Ice Hotel is gone and forgotten a few months later when the summer returns and everything melts away.
‘What’s the point of building the Ice Hotel if it doesn’t last?’ I wondered at the time and until recently I was not quite sure of the answer.
However, when an activist organization brought a polar bear sculptured in ice to Sydney, to spark the discussion about global warming and the loss of the polar bear habitat, I came one conclusion: the polar bear is doomed, but so are we.
As the polar bear melted away, becoming a steel skeleton in the end, raising questions about the poor animal existence I was forced to reflect upon my life and how momentary everything is.
Sometimes it is comforting to think Art can last longer than its creator as the work of the great masters can attest, but most likely time will go by and these Art pieces will be lost… like the polar bear and eventually the human kind.
In that sense it probably matters little if the production of an artist is melted away during the summer or if the work of the great masters is still around. It is better to engage with the present than trying to elude our ephemeral existence.
What matters the most is that I traveled to a remote place to experience an amazing ice construction that years later inspired me to write this post. Two enjoyable experiences propelled by a crazy idea.