scratch the snow field

2021
3 screen video installation
02:33
Installation's photo: Jukan Tateisi

Scratch The Snow Field (2021) is a video work produced by Kamimura Yoichi during his stay in the Teshio Experimental Forest at Hokkaido, Japan. This is a research project on ice and snow in cooperation with the Hokkaido University.

This artwork is composed of three elements. The first element is a video recorded with a GoPro camera, which was tied to a snowmobile with a wire; and dragging the snowmobile around in a snowy field in the forest. The second element presents a snowmobile running in a snowy field from a human perspective. Finally, in the third element, it presents the bird's-eye view image which was recorded with a drone.

At the Northernmost area of the experimental forest in Japan, where roads and rivers are covered with white ice and snow that obscure the boundaries of things. Kamimura exclaimed that he felt his senses were numb. In this snow, it felt as though humans are unable to move freely. The GoPro camera has captured the scene where the accumulated snow was breaking apart, seemingly a dancing snow. At the same time, the scene captured by the drone from the sky shows a line drawn by the snowmobile in the snow field.

Thus, this artwork presents the intersection of various viewpoints and the human perspectives which has been overlapped with the struggles that humans may have in this obscuring world covered with ice and snow.