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Make it snow! Make it snow! Make it snow!

Make it snow! Make it snow! Make it snow!
72 sec (UK 2008)

idea & realisation: Manu Luksch
soundtrack: Mukul Patel
many thanks to Matthias Rabanser and the Nicolussi family

A (very) short meditation on the manipulation of winter landscapes for tourism that points to their fragility and recalls the need for a holistic perspective. 
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screenings:

 premiere: China International Youth Arts Festival
13 July 08, Great Hall of the People, Beijing, broadcast on CCTV-1

further screenings (2009) HORS PISTES, Centre Pompidou (2008): Cambridge Film Festival, Urban Screens Melbourne, Spacex /Exeter, Wysing Arts Centre, DCA Dundee, CCA Aurora Festival/Norwich ... (see calendar or Stop.Watch for details)


"This is a video that is incredibly poetic at the same time as showing the insanity of how we live. It's based around using snow machines to make snow for a ski slope. Manu Luksch’s voice is incredibly good.  In a warming world, we are making snow so people can ski. The more I look at it the more I see. And it also has a very good aesthetic."
Michaela Crimmin, RSA Arts & Ecology, Best of 2008

Europe's mountainous regions currently feel the effects of climate change more dramatically than the lowlands. Temperatures are rising proportionally higher, glaciers are receding, biodiversity is threatened, snowfall is lower and there is an increase in snow avalanches and mud slides.

In order to maintain winter tourism – the primary business in most of Europe's mountainous areas including the Alps and the Pyrenees – the first few snow cannons were introduced about 25 years ago. Today 80% of Italian Alpine resorts, and 65% of the Austrian and French ski slopes make use of artificial snow to provide the white landscape advertised in travel magazines. Artificially-produced snow costs approximately EUR 2 per square metre every season (much of which comes from EU funds), and importantly, consumes huge amounts of energy and water. The snow cannon epitomizes how humans cover up and even exacerbate ecological problems in order to fulfill frivolous desires.

 

download high-res stills:

[01 http://lo-res.org/~manu/downloads/MakeItSnow_Luksch_01.tif]
[02 http://lo-res.org/~manu/downloads/MakeItSnow_Luksch_02.tif]

 

Commissioned by Animate Projects and RSA Arts & Ecology as part of Stop. Watch.
in association with Arts Council England and Channel 4