In this interview, Nicolai discusses Eisfeld II, where visitors skate on a rink transformed into a work of art. The artist reflects on the body, space, and how we produce and perceive ourselves within the anthropized landscape.
In Olaf Nicolai’s work (1962, Berlin), the aesthetic appropriation of nature by human culture and design is a recurring element. The anthropized landscape thus emerges as one of the central leitmotifs of his research, in which body, space, and movement become tools to explore complex relationships between reality, imagination, and perception. Eisfeld II, presented at Palazzo Diedo – Berggruen Arts & Culture, is a striking example: by transforming the piano nobile of the palace into an ice rink, Nicolai invites the audience to become performers, moving between risk, potential falls, and pleasure, while simultaneously generating new images of themselves. The project integrates technology and scenography, creating a dialogue between history, architecture, and contemporaneity, while the soundscape and the motto Enjoy / Survive amplify the symbolic dimension of the work. In this interview, the artist tells us about his creative process, his relationship with Venice, and the reflections that guided the realization of this unique experience, highlighting the production of oneself as a “product” and the social relevance of art as a form of shared aesthetic experience.
The first Eisfeld, literally “ice field,” was presented in 2001 at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich. How did the idea arise to transfer this performance onto a skating rink accessible to the public, set up on the piano nobile of a 17th-century frescoed palace?
Mario Codognato [Director of Berggruen Arts & Culture, ed.] approached me after seeing Eisfeld in Zurich and suggested it could also be shown in Venice. At first, I was surprised, but then I thought – if so, then in the piano nobile, and with an option: allowing people to explore the centre of the palazzo like a biotope on ice skates. In the Migros Museum, you could enter the field, but you had to bring your own ice skates.
How was it possible to realize the work from a technical and operational perspective?
This was only possible because today’s technology allows the creation of ice rinks without using the traditional method of cooling water.
At the heart of the work are the changes in the relationship between body, space, and movement, and particularly the imaginations these provoke. What meaning do reality and imagination take on when moving through the work?
The new state of technology also translates into a new approach to staging. It looks like ice, and when installed properly, it truly is ‘ice,’ and it no longer matters what kind of ice it is, because it has to “function,” especially as a media event. And that is what happens here. You put on your skates and become performers who certainly skate for themselves, but at the same time, perform for others. In this sense, they imagine and “produce” themselves at the same time.
What role does the “soundscape” surrounding the work play?
When Eisfeld was shown in 2001, I had the idea of using music to create an animation layer. The idea for the soundscape also came about because soundscapes were emerging in shopping malls and lifts at the time, as a way of engaging customers with an emotional experience. Product loyalty on an emotional level suddenly became much more important than on a practical level. The concept of soundscapes was also updated for Eisfeld II. Instead of pre-produced sounds, as in the 2001 version, there are now changing sounds that are constantly re-selected.
In your works, and in this one in particular, the audience becomes the performer. While enjoying the act of ice skating, they simultaneously run the risk of falling and failing. The words Enjoy / Survive are displayed on a lightbox above the magnificent and imaginative space of the rink. What do they mean in the context of the work?
The sticker with the Enjoy / Survive motif comes from a specific context. At the end of 1999, the newspaper DIE ZEIT asked artists to design a motif for its millennium edition that could serve as a kind of visual commentary on the new millennium. I proposed this graphic, which was still in black and white at the time, and it was accepted and printed. In Enjoy / Survive and Survive / Enjoy, I see a dynamic whose rapid developments I have experienced myself and consider formative. In the 1990s, criticism of the culture industry was of great importance, but it has somewhat faded into the background. Yet it should be emphasised again, because questioning how we, as visual artists, operate through aesthetic actions in an economic context – and also help to shape it – has lost none of its relevance. We have social relevance, not because we send out direct political messages, but because of how we format and socialise sensuality through our forms.
How do you feel about the fact that, thanks to this staging (skating rink/historic building), images of your work are circulating at incredible speed and across all levels?
For me, this perfectly updates the logic of Enjoy / Survive and Survive / Enjoy. We enjoy ourselves, entertain ourselves, and at the same time produce ourselves as a product to be consumed. To me, this is one of the most relevant production logics of the present.
You and your art have been protagonists in Venice on several occasions. What kind of relationship have you developed with this city?
Presenting Eisfeld now as a new variant, Eisfeld II, in Venice is something special, as the city itself presents a fantastic constellation of the interplay between artificiality and naturalness. The circumstances under which the lagoon was settled are remarkable, and when we are here, we wonder how it could have actually worked. That is why this staging makes particular sense to me here, and why I was so taken with the idea when it was suggested. At the same time, for me it is once again a work in which the context of Venice becomes part of a ‘text’.
