Celebrates the First Anniversary of Roni Horn’s
VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER
SATURDAY MAY 24
STYKKISHÓLMUR, ICELAND
To celebrate the first year of Roni Horn’s VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER and the beginning of acclaimed American writer Rebecca Solnit’s residency at the library, Artangel presents a unique evening of readings and music on Saturday 24th May.
Solnit’s singular literary voice explores a range of subject matter encompassing personal memoir and politics, history and the environment. During the evening she reads from The Blue of Distance, a chapter from her last book A Field Guide to Getting Lost. First writer in residence, Icelandic fiction writer Gudrun Eva Minervudóttir reads from her novel in progress, began during her time in the studio.
The celebrations also include a special talk – Primal Waters – from Hélène Cixous, on a rare visit to Iceland. One of the most formidable writers and thinkers of our times, Cixous has enjoyed a long engagement with Horn’s work. The evening culminates with a concert by Icelandic singer-songwriter Ólöf Arnalds.
VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER’s annual writers’ residency program invites writers from the fields of fiction, non-fiction, poetry or screenwriting, or from the natural sciences.
For the past 25 years, the work of Roni Horn has been intimately involved with the distinctive geography, geology, climate and culture of Iceland. In 2007, for Artangel’s first international commission, Roni Horn developed VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER – a multi-faceted long-term installation and community building in the town of Stykkishólmur on the western coast of Iceland, north of Reykjavik. VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER is situated in Stykkishólmur’s former library building, overlooking the ocean on one side and the harbour and town on the other. One of the most distinctive elements of the installation are twenty-four glass columns containing glacial water from around Iceland – gathered from the glacial tongues of Vatnajökull, the glaciers of Hofsjökull, Langökull, Snaefellsjökull and glacial rivers. Horn describes VATNASAFN/LIBRARY OF WATER as a “kind of lighthouse in which the viewer becomes the lighthouse in which the view becomes
the light.”
For more information please contact ragnheidur@stykkisholmur.is or info@artangel.org.uk or see www.libraryofwater.is
For information about other Artangel projects, past, present and future, see www.artangel.org.uk