34 days in Iceland: (Slow) Working Day: The 6th Day in Reykjavik (2 July 2008)

I began the day at 8.30 a.m. with my breakfast. The heavy clouds seemed ready to release rain at any time. The cloudy weather was actually good for me, because it meant better to be inside and work.I first updated this blog and I thought that this would be my daily activity until the end of my residency (whenever the weather is not nice).

I started working on my idea. The concept follows what I have worked in the previous series Paper World that material (paper string) metaphorically lives in the world. I continued the concept by thinking that paper string that is the product of the nature, or more precisely of trees, could be returned to its origin - the nature - in the original form of a tree. I also bridged the idea of creating a tree with the fact that Finnish nature is ubiquitous of trees, but my tree would be unlike others. Having been in Iceland for some days, I noticed that "real" trees are rare in this country. In the other words, trees don't seem to belong to Icelandic nature. There were only grass, flowers and small bushes everywhere I have been so far, but not any larger trees. Perhaps, the climate and the unpredictable weather prevent trees to grow large here. The strong wind make trees crooked and not straight. Seemingly, the nature here consists of only earth, air, fire, water, flora and fauna. This also explained why the country imported wood or even wooden houses from Norway.

I googled the keywords "Iceland forest tree" and found interesting info about forest in 36 European countries. While Finland has 70% forest covering the country, Iceland has only 0.3%! Interesting, isn't it? Among few species of trees native to Iceland, one of which is the birch. I also found on the internet that there is an attempt (and dream) to reforest in Iceland by the National Forest. Iceland might not no longer be a treeless country one day!

As Iceland seemed to lack of trees, creating a tree while I'm here then might conceptually contribute to the effort and challenge of the reforestation. On the other hand, as I came from Finland, the land of trees and forests, to create a tree made of the product of the Finnish forests - paper string - is to representationally bring part of the forests with which I'm familiar to Iceland.

I sketched and wrote on my little diary...

Then, at 1.05 p.m I unfolded the paper string I brought with me from Helsinki and started to cut the string into pieces, around 6 meter long.

Starting to knot the trunk of the tree, it was extremely slow after I had not touch this material for over a year (I have worked with paper string in a bigger size though). I tried to regularly photograph the tree in progress (as part of documentation, of course!). The below photo was taken at 5.10 p.m.