Nemo

We are told that last Friday evening’s blizzard, known as Nemo, was a once-in-a-century event. Well, yes, but notice how many of these we seem to be getting nowadays. I have never experienced anything remotely like it. Here in New Haven, a fraction more than thirty-four inches of snow fell in twenty-four hours, but neighboring Hamden got more than forty. Certainly the snow that drifted along the front of my house in the Westville neighborhood was much deeper than three feet, more like six. It is not difficult to describe the fundamental difference between an ordinary snow storm and a blizzard. Storm has always struck me as a misnomer. When it merely snows there is a delicious quiet, a softness, an atmosphere almost of calm not unlike the effect of a blanket—provided you are safely tucked up in bed, or sitting by the fire with a cup of tea and a good book. A blizzard, by contrast, has teeth, fangs, claws. The snow starts to behave like grit against doors and window-panes. It penetrates nooks and crannies. It scrapes and mauls. There is a howl in the wind, and a sinister air of real danger. Walking in a snow storm can be pleasant, if at times hard work. Trudging through a blizzard is hazardous. You cannot see. Your footing is at best uncertain. The cold is especially severe. You must seek shelter. Nothing better accounts for the practical purpose and life-saving rationale of the covered bridges of New England than a fully-fledged blizzard. On Saturday morning the impact of Nemo was almost overwhelming in its scale. Dozens of snow plows, emergency vehicles and cop cars lay abandoned in city streets like so many woolly mammoths. The streets were impassable, even on foot. Plucky citizens began to shovel, but as the city’s monster digging equipment began to carve single-lane canyons through the middle of the main arteries their efforts were largely annulled or even reversed because of the immense walls of snow thrown up on either side. On Monday it began to rain and, the drains being blocked with snow, the whole concoction began to settle into deep, frigid puddles, soon to become sullen floes of ice, exceedingly unhelpful. Still the city chugged ahead. The Governor temporarily lifted a ban on dumping snow into Long Island Sound because there really was nowhere else to put it. Now, nearly a week later, a small army of diggers, earth moving equipment and dump trucks are still loading up with immense quantities of snow, gradually clearing the streets and parking lots. The university was closed for classes on Monday and Tuesday, something that through 312 years is almost unheard-of. I must say that the citizens of New Haven exhibited extraordinary patience, forbearance, generosity, and good cheer amid the most trying circumstances. Frustrating though it is to be holed up for days on end, and to experience the onset of cabin fever, most people were philosophical—merely breathing silent prayers lest the snow and ice on the roof formed a destructive ice dam, or worse. The excellent Tony Maratea managed to carve me out a portion of my drive in which to park, and also a little path to the back door, but I have no idea how on earth he will clear the rest of it. Forget the snow-blower, this requires at least a Bobcat. In the meantime, we continue to install our exhibition, and have really only lost two working days as a consequence of the blizzard. Only two weeks to go, but I am sure we will get the job done.

Where Am I?

I speak to Mum every week by phone. She brings me up to date with the garden, the libernum, the thrip, and her epic struggle with the possums. When we chat I always end up thinking of when I was a kid, running around with no shoes, watching for snakes, getting sunburned, getting splinters, feeding scraps to the seagulls on the back beach, diving off the jetty, rowing to the store for chops, milk, and the papers, helping to burn off, cutting back. I think of Dad’s strange belief that burning cowpats kept the mosquitoes at bay.

It’s not merely that, traveling back and forth between New Haven, Connecticut, and London, I feel equally foreign in both places. It’s beginning to feel as though my Australia is a sort of navy blue dream place where water is as precious as good perfume, the trees are stoical, real cold does not exist, and the distant mountains of East Gippsland look like turquoise glass.

“Where the bloody hell are you?” asked the recent, disastrously offensive Australian Tourism Commission advertising campaign. I suppose my answer should be “working for Yale” but another, equally accurate, is “all over the place.”

Matej Andraž Vogrinčič

What is this work of art? Is it a very large sculpture, a piece of landscape architecture, or civic design? Is it an event, a memory, a 3-dimensional visual poem, or simply a place?

In the short-hand jargon of the current contemporary art world, the work of Slovenian artist, Matej Andraž Vogrinčič is usually called ‘site specific’ or ‘installation’ art. This has developed out of a remarkable transformation in the range and type of locations that artists sought out in the past 50 years. American ‘earthworks’ or ‘land art’ of the 1960s, for example, is one of the most striking of those recent movements. In common with many other kinds of large-scale ‘installation’, these projects, which were sometimes even created for places where few if any people might actually see them, defied the conventions of the modern art market that have arisen over the past 300 years. It is often impossible to ‘own’ an installation, to collect it, or to corral it into a larger collection of art by other people. It insists upon its own autonomy, and frequently takes advantage of unique features of the surroundings, whether it is a stretch of open country or a disused urban space. And the artist asserts his right to shape and determine every aspect of our experience of the work of art. It can never exist in quite the same way anywhere else, or at any other time, except in our memories.

Matej Andraž Vogrinčič has created installations in Ljubljana, the capital City of his native country, Slovenia, as well as in Venice, Italy; Adelaide, South Australia; the isolated opal-mining community of Coober Pedy in the desert of far outback Central Australia; Perth, Western Australia; Christchurch, New Zealand, Liverpool in the north of England, and elsewhere. This installation in New Haven is his first work in the United States.

In each case, Matej Andraz takes advantage of the unique environment in which he works, often alluding to the history of the place, bringing to the task not merely hard physical work, but wry wit, and a no-nonsense, non-argumentative accommodation of the concerns of local people, the requirements of the civic authorities, even the weather. One of the most important features of his work is its capacity to interest and stimulate children, and while his works range widely in format, they have in common a basic clarity in the choice of simple motifs with local resonance, and a capacity to harness those motifs with intelligence, and gentle humor.

This text was drafted for public information by a private group of individuals in New Haven, who made possible Matej’s recent, 2007 Farmington Canal ‘Erector Set’ project, part of which is illustrated above. The text, which was aimed at the general public, was used by the group in various ways along with an interview I videotaped with Matej.