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Overview
I’m often asked, but have no idea why I chose Iceland, why I first started going, why I still go. In truth I believe Iceland chose me.—from the introduction
Contemporary artist Roni Horn first visited Iceland in 1975 at the age of nineteen, and since then, the island’s treeless expanse has had an enduring hold on Horn’s creative work. Through a series of remarkable and poetic reflections, vignettes, episodes, and illustrated essays, Island Zombie distills the artist’s lifelong experience of Iceland’s natural environment. Together, these pieces offer an unforgettable exploration of the indefinable and inescapable force of remote, elemental places, and provide a sustained look at how an island and its atmosphere can take possession of the innermost self.
Island Zombie is a meditation on being present. It vividly conveys Horn’s experiences, from the deeply profound to the joyful and absurd. Through powerful evocations of the changing weather and other natural phenomena—the violence of the wind, the often aggressive birds, the imposing influence of glaciers, and the ubiquitous presence of water in all its variety—we come to understand the author’s abiding need for Iceland, a place uniquely essential to Horn’s creative and spiritual life. The dramatic surroundings provoke examinations of self-sufficiency and isolation, and these ruminations summon a range of cultural companions, including El Greco, Emily Dickinson, Judy Garland, Wallace Stevens, Edgar Allan Poe, William Morris, and Rachel Carson. While brilliantly portraying nature’s sublime energy, Horn also confronts issues of consumption, destruction, and loss, as the industrial and man-made encroach on Icelandic wilderness.
Filled with musings on a secluded region that perpetually encourages a sense of discovery, Island Zombie illuminates a wild and beautiful Iceland that remains essential and new.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780691248622 |
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Publisher: | Princeton University Press |
Publication date: | 02/21/2023 |
Pages: | 256 |
Sales rank: | 629,809 |
Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.70(d) |
About the Author
Table of Contents
Introduction
Island Zombie 1
Pooling Waters
Making Being Here Enough 11
Sometimes Dead 13
The Cold Blood of Iceland 15
Bluff and Psycho 17
How-Is Visible Here 19
Floating in the Desert 23
Accidents Are Mundane 25
Roads Lack Dedication 27
Little Showers 29
Falling Trees Make Sound 31
Verne's Journey 33
The Probability of Round Rocks 35
Special Effects 37
Loa and Loa 39
Weather Is National Sport 41
Anatomy and Geography 43
Indoor Water 45
Pronouns Detain Me 47
Bluff Life 49
A Newark Here 53
Island and Labyrinth 55
Where the Earth Is Hot 57
Youth and Geometry 59
Sleep: Rotation Method 63
When Dickinson Shut Her Eyes 65
Pastoral and Cave 67
The Flats (After William Morris) 69
Crossing a Field I Remember 71
I Cant See the Arctic Circle from Here 73
A Franchise of Rainbows 75
Wallace Stevens's Ice 77
Collected
Hot Water Sampler 85
An Adhesive Feeling 89
A Mink Look 91
Mirror, Desert and Mirror 93
Monroe, Iceland 97
Throwing Itself Together 99
Something Shimmering 101
An Evening with Gelatinous and Glutinous 103
Cloth-Home Culture 105
The Other Here 107
Water and Clearing (Excerpt) 109
Conjecture a Cause: Seljavegur 2, Reykjavik 101, August 22, 2003 111
Notes on the Obsolescence of Islands 115
Eruption, Assassination (November 1963) 119
A White Stone 121
My Oz 125
Weather Reports You (Excerpt)
Introduction 135
Selection: 21 Reports 137
Morgunbladid Newspaper
Note on Texts 180
The Nothing That Is 181
Notes on Icelandic Architecture (Excerpt) 187
One Hundred Waterfalls, Five Hundred Jobs 189
Iceland's Difference 195
Colophon 246
What People are Saying About This
"Island Zombie is an intoxicating artist’s journal and a work of art itself. We feel, through Roni Horn’s carefully rendered words and photographs, the delight of discovering ‘nowhere.’ Yet, Horn offers a provocative and heartbreaking question: ‘Is nowhere gone?’ At a time when many of us have come to understand the price of overusing and wrongly altering the earth’s resources, this is a powerful manifesto."—Anna Deavere Smith, author of Letters to a Young Artist"Roni Horn’s Island Zombie depicts, with laser-like clarity, the complex and profound experience of being human in a vast, fabulous, and unforgiving natural world. It’s a remarkable accomplishment."—Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours"Roni Horn’s Iceland is part landscape, part lover. Scrambling over pewter shale and purple moss, sleeping so still she becomes a branch for a bird, Horn records her tectonic relationship with a strange volcanic island that is simultaneously other and self."—Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit"An astounding act of meditation and a guidebook back to our senses, Roni Horn’s Island Zombie rides the changeability of the life of a place with solitude at its center. This remarkable achievement is a gift to life, a gift of a life, a gift of life."—Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric“In these days of global disharmony, Roni Horn reminds us of the connection between us all: the weather. Horn never misses a word, no matter how big or small. She takes us to the edge of nowhere and fills it with content.”—Nan Goldin, artist"There is an Icelandic saying: ‘A guest’s eye is a sharp eye.’ Roni Horn is an artist who has defined Iceland for me. Few know the country as well as Horn does and her work has taught me how to look at and feel this place."—Ragnar Kjartansson, artist“Island Zombie engagingly tracks Roni Horn’s struggle to be present and to see—really see—the nuances of the Icelandic landscape. The artist is attentive and observant, and as a result, these pieces evoke solitude in nature as a joy and respite.”—Eva Heisler, author of Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic"Roni Horn’s brilliant and timely book is a must-read for all who have followed the career of this stellar American artist. Island Zombie is concerned with the temporality of landscape, the agency of the nonhuman world, and the mutual constitution of subjects and places. It will interest anyone concerned with the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of the Anthropocene.”—Johanne Sloan, author of Joyce Wieland’s “The Far Shore”