In the height of High Tatras, at the place called Hrebienok, near the Ice Dome, a weekend competition of ice sculptors is being held every winter. The exercise is similar to creative meditation, like the proverbial Buddhist sprinkling of sand mandalas. Sculptors process ice blocks for hours, and the results of their work are beautiful. But they can be seen just for a few days at most. Then the ever stronger winter sun slowly melts them down.
All the more it pleases the viewer when ice artists do not create kitsch, but they want to express some deeper idea with their work.
It happened in 2017, when I was pleasantly surprised by the work of the Austrian team. They depicted a rope walker in a top hat. A creature, who we can consider a typical symbol of a “white man”. Someone who has ambition and power to rule the world. The rope walker walked with his eyes concentrated on the thin rope and balanced his wobbly position with his brain on one side and with his heart on the other.
We decided to adopt the message of this ice work as the credo of our creative group. The current social reality is full of extreme solutions and unilateral pressures. But the harmonious development of both individuals and the whole society requires a search for balance on the thin rope of existence. But balance, in our understanding, does not mean carrying on one’s shoulders the entire burden of all the ideas that humanity has created, and balancing one-sided big mistakes with mistakes on the other side. We, like rope walkers, should carry really important things, and our movement along the rope should be smooth and neat.
This is the ideal towards which we are aiming to move.
Ice, as a material that gave life to this message, is a part of our credo as well. Ice is not a durable material. In order to continue to inspire and teach other kindred souls, the idea should transfer from the ice into other types of media. And have to spread among people.
We consider this to be our main mission. To allow longer life for ideas that would very quickly dissolve into chaos. And to allow these valuable ideas to get exactly to the places where their messages are needed.
