SNOWMADE

Journey to the borders of Europe because of a snow sculpture
English vesion by Barbara Bonfadini

"I do not write songs that talks about cars. I write songs that talks
about people who travel on those cars". Bruce Springsteen 1979

During a Saturday afternoon of November 2000 three people from Sondrio formed the first Valtellina snow sculptors team. They were at the Museum of Sondrio and it was exactly 15.30 p.m..
The first work, carried out at the altitude of 2400 metres on Mottolino peak, Livigno, was the first of a long series of sculptures of which now there are only some pictures and memories left, but that will always belong to the continents where they have been carved as they penetrated, in their liquid form, into the depths of those places.To that edition of “Art in Ice” participated also an American old guy, Klaus Ebeling, who looked like he knew everything about snow sculptures. During a dinner we talked a lot and I explained to him that we were happy with the results we were achieving, considering that we were not pro sculptors. While I was trying to complete the concept, Klaus interrupted me and told: "Boy, listen to me and listen carefully: You have come here, you have worked hard for three days and you have done that thing outside. Well, now you also are bloody sculptors ". Then he gave me a pat on the shoulder and gave a hearty laugh. After that, we started wandering on the Internet asking for information and notices and we soon had the opportunity to participate in competitions in different places, of which we did not even know the existence and that no one would think to visit during a holiday.
At the beginning of last year we managed to get in touch with Natalia Nefedova, who gave us the chance to participate as the first Italian Team in the snow ice and fire sculptures Festival of Perm, a Russian town of more than a million inhabitants in the extreme part of Eastern Europe. We had few news about this place: we only knew that it would be probably very cold and that we had to travel along the first section of Transiberian rail for more than 20 hours. Perm is also known to be the place in which Boris Pasternak set “Dr Zivago”. Here what happened, or, at least, this is what I remember about it.

When you arrive at Sheremetievo 2 airport you should take a bus or a mini-van (in Russian – avtoline). Usually, they have a sign “To Rechnoy Vokzal Metro Station” (of course, in Russian), so you’d better ask someone “Gde avtoline na Rechnoy Vokzal?”. I don’t know how much they cost now but not more than 30 roubles, certainly much less than a taxi; those catched at the airport are very expensive.
All entrances to Metro Stations have an “M” sign. From Rechnoy Vokzal Station you go underground to Komsomolskaya Station, get off and go towards the Monument to Lenin near Yaroslavsky Railway station in a small square facing “Moskovsky” Department Store. There are 3 Railway Stations in Komsomolskaya Square, yours is Yaroslavsky Vokzal. The person who will give you tickets will be from Perm Gorky Park: Alexandre Mineyev – a big man who almost doesn’t speak English. He will be waiting for you near the Monument to Lenin with “PERM FESTIVAL” sign in his hands at 19:15. The train Moscow-Nizhniy Tagil (number 50) leaves at 20.05 from Yaroslavsky Vokzal. Your carriage is the number 3. Do not forget to bring winter clothing. See you in Perm on Monday evening. Natasha (Perm, February, 4th 2005)

The monotonous ceiling of Moscow Airport and the phlegm of bored border officials characterized our first two hours spent in Russia while we were waiting to cross the customs and waiting (in vain) for the box with the tools, left for a few days in Milan, thanks to Alitalia. In that short time we only managed to negotiate an acceptable price for a race to the station by an unlicensed taxi. Near the Lenin Monument there was already Mr. Mineyev and with him the teams from France and Netherlands who had travelled with us.On the Transiberian rail it was already the day after, the dirty glass behind the embroidered curtains suggested wide snowy expanses. In my bunk, placed on one side, I looked at the white and twisted landscape, always white but always different: snow, trees, long shadows in the intensive and icy morning sun. Towns. Suburbs that seemed villages made of uninhabited hovels or perhaps simply with the fireplaces off for lack of wood. During this journey I perceived, but only glimpsing it, poverty. We come and go in a hurry, we make noise, we really have fun and then tell that it was all beautiful …
Our guardian angels in Perm were Irina and Yana, the translators that the organization assigned to us: two students, who always followed us in order to help us in communicating with people. This is not always easy, because only some young people speak English, mostly girls. Irina and Yana were unfortunately also subjected to the torture of assisting us while we were working; thank God, the temperature was for most of the day only a few degrees under zero.
Too hot for a couple of sculptures a little too exasperated on the static point of view. One was that of our Dutch friends to which I turned a saying that an old American guy with a crumpled cap told us after the collapsing of one of our sculptures: "If God doesn't give you nothing but lemons, then make a lemonade". In that specific case the Dutch team liked better some good vodka, called vitamin by the premises, and gave up their work.
There were excellent works within the Gorky Park, where sculptors were at work and sculptors had worked previously to build dizzy slides of ice and other games for children. Many professionals participate in this kind of events: wood, stone, sand, fire, ice and snow in winter. We only do it for fun. It is written in the Code. No economic advantages, no sponsors. Our commitment is not stimulated by prizes: we won some prizes that we did not even withdrawn for total lack of attention to this topic, including the money for the third place in Perm…. Our Cactus amused and captured the attention of people, what we wanted.
A Russian colleague was creating a sculpture made up of a male figure and a female, one of which claimed the other. While the bodies were just sketched he asked to guess who according to us was the man and who the woman. The most familiar iconographies and (perhaps) our culture suggested that the man was the one helding and protecting the woman. Wrong. The one behind was the woman who held and tried to drag home her drunk man. In this part of the earth, explained the author, men are not considered very reliable, families almost exclusively rely on women strength. Many people were excited for the presence of an Italian team: an old lady offered to prepare a cake for us; two girls named Olga explained that in Russia if you are between two people who have the same name you can make your dreams come true.
This way of travelling, giving you the opportunity to know more in depth the people you meet, is the best I know. During an ordinary journey the places visited are the things you talk about when you go home, in this case the places become a simple container where you find people, revealing the true essence of their land. Emotions are not likely to slip on the skin, but they penetrate, they run in your veins and, as a bitter medicine, have a bad taste but they are good for your health.
Leaving Perm, while the train was slowly running over the long bridge on the icy expanse of the river Kama – it looked like the sad scene in a movie – I had the feeling that the programmed visits to Moscow and St Petersburg were contrived compared with the intensive experience that was now ending.
The idea to spending 23 hours on the way back to Moscow trying to decode and convert into positive energy the sensations I were experiencing, preserved me by the vortex of melancholy so well described by a Portuguese poet that I started to read while the train flowed along the tracks muffled with snow of the Transiberian rail.

Gianmario Bonfadini

Issued on www.tellusfolio.it May, 4th 2007
and on "'l Gazetin" #5 May, 20th 2007

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