Igloo Construction – The Fear Phase
By: annebloom
Category: Uncategorized
| Aperture: | f/9 |
|---|---|
| Focal Length: | 5.9mm |
| ISO: | 160 |
| Shutter: | 1/640 sec |
| Camera: | Canon PowerShot SD780 IS |
After about two months since I first decided to build the igloo, I finally started. And suddenly, a few hours before I finally face this construction, I realized that I had been living a mental struggle since the beginning of the igloo phase of the project. I was dreaming, thinking, calculating, researching, talking to people in Canada and in Brazil about the construction but never having the courage to star it. I felt excited and at the same time deeply terrified by this challenge. I had done blocks of ice, blocks of snow, hybrid blocks of ice and snow (I even started a cardboard igloo) and, by my different experiments, I kept myself busy and avoiding the “real problem” – the igloo itself. With the cardboard igloo, I knew it. I had to start facing this thing, otherwise I wouldn’t have my tranquility back. I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a painful mental process, but I think this struggle with myself, my body and my mind, was the first immersive experience in my work. Putting my dreams, my fears, and my physical (and mental) strength into play was a real challenge of self-knowledge.
But in the morning before I finally give my first step into the site, I realized the richness of this first phase as a whole. Now I think I should call it the Fear Phase, and the Fear Phase was somehow predicted in the proposal, I just hadn’t realized yet how deep it could get inside my mind.
One of the reasons I decided to build an Igloo is because I wanted to explore the feelings that are part of the construction of a home, from a shelter to a place that reflect your life and personality. In my own research I had concluded that this (mental) construction of mixed feelings and emotions related to the place we live starts somehow with the feeling of fear. The unpredictability of the future to come, the doubts when one chooses a dwelling, the ponderation of pros and cons, the decisions one has to make… and then, slowly, the start of the process of appropriation of the place, exploration of the sites, development of you favorite spaces etc…
it always start with some fear mixed with curiosity before you start to actually feel you own a place or belong to a place… In this sense, the Fear Phase couldn’t be more fruitful and self-explanatory.
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about me...
annebloom
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The same sense of fascination that relates the feelings of fear and curiosity is cited by Glenn Gould in his Radio Documentary ” The Idea of North” (1967)
“This is Glenn Gould and this program is called the ‘Idea of North’. I’ve long been intrigued by that incredible chemistry of tundra and taiga which constitutes the arctic and subarctic of our country. I’ve read about it, written about it and even pulled up my parka once and gone there. Yet like all but a very few canadians I had no real experience of the North (…) and the North has remained for me a convenient place to dream about, talk about and in the end, avoid.”