ice writing history
installations | dawson city , yukon by nicole dextras
termperature climate change
rivers water naming
Les Noms (a coucher dehors) is a series of names made of ice taken from the 1901 Census of Dawson City during the gold rush. They were people who originally came from Québec. Many were mis-spelled or Anglicised and I have represented them they way they appeared in the census. Elphese is one of these old names or noms a coucher dehors , as we used to call them when I was a kid, that are no longer in use. Noms a coucher dehors means names that sleep outside, because they were uncultured, rural names. It is the kind of name, such as Gédéon, Cléophase and Gandias, which belong to my grand-parents generation. Today I feel these names are quite beautiful and poetic. Les Noms , LEGACY and The River’s Bride were new works created during a residency at the Klondike Institute of Art in Dawson City from November 10 2008 to February 4 2009. In the past I have battled the warming weather trend in cities such as Toronto and Montreal where I did other ice projects. The intent of going to the far north was to avoid weather uncertainties. Unfortunately severe cold of -50° c, followed by unheard of above 0° winter rain, caused difficulties for these installations. My work is a testimony to the vagaries of climate change. LEGACY consists of eight-foot tall letters made of ice, installed on the Yukon river. Wooden forms were set out on the river, filled with water in-situ and left to freeze. Unfortunately the extreme cold caused fissures in the ice and they cracked and fell almost as soon as they were released. The L and Y were left standing surrounded by huge broken ice blocks resembling the ruins of some frozen archeological dig. Legacy refers to the landscape as being the heritage of the inhabitants of this region.
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weather matters: On Site review 21
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