drawing a line at the arctic circle
Ajanki at Rovanieme, Finnland, 1993.
the arctic circle snatched from virtuality for a distance of a thousand metres from the base to the tip of a Finnish mountainside, set into the landscape. making visible something invisibilizing. A geographer's trauma. childhood phantasmagoria. The restless brush, stroke upon stroke, moving in a proverbial bee-line over sticks and stones. a hair's breadth from slapstick, drawing the yellow line in yellow work overalls through the Finnish forest. piero manzoni let out of the box like the bewitching genie out of the bottle. the gaze never leaving the ground. not for a moment. the stencil not even unpacked. Free of any artificiality just following the rhythm of the movement. Having arrived at the top, an ironic glance back at the linear history of the line-country artistes.
