FOREWORD BY PER ESPEN STOKNES 13
Almost everything we touch upon in our conversations now comes
out fresh and clear, like the air we breathe.
We express our gratitude for the abundant gifts of heavenly
powder, improvising S-shaped curves in the vast, soft, steep white
canvas. This is our human aesthetic response to this unique landscape.
We make this art form—not on, nor of, nor from—but fully inside
these receding yet magnificent snowy glacier slopes. We ski at their
grace, and we must immediately respond to their shapes and forces,
including their vast hidden crevasses or sudden avalanches. We are
subjected to them. Yet, if we respect their rules, their settings, and play
safe within their rules and boundaries, we can dance with powder,
expressing the mind-blowing immense joy of being alive and well in
this pure, remote whiteness. Do the glaciers enjoy the aesthetics of
our downward parallel S’s drawn in their outermost skin after we’ve
crept back into our fragile cabins? I have no idea. The strong winds
and nightly snowfall erase our tracks every other day as if we had
never been there.
For cultures that live nearby, these ancient mountains are of
particular spiritual significance, home to gods and giants who influence
daily life. Maybe Western culture is about to wake up to this reality.
Maybe they are the giants, the physical foundations of the weather
gods. With more than human powers that influence our daily climate,
glaciers are not “just” spiritually significant, they are an indispensable
force for our civilization’s survival. Perhaps they are waiting for us to
recognize how closely and mutually interwoven humans are with our
natural surroundings. What happens to the air impacts the waters, the
trees and even far-off glaciers, and what happens to the waters, the air
and the trees also impacts our psyche. There is nothing, not even the
most remote glacier, that is not connected with our everyday breath
and our carbon emissions. Through the arts, we explore and express
this intimate interaction.
In the art making process, our imagination merges with the imagination
of the world , particularly in nature-based expressive arts. Since there
is no way we humans can make a glacier or mountain, creek stone