Watch: ICELAND video trailer (1 min)

The humble beginnings of ICELAND took root within a 3,000-square-foot former meat packing plant in East Los Angeles. The plant consisted of a series of industrial walk-in freezers and refrigerators powered by large compressor/condenser combos that I revamped to sustain massive cold-based operations.

Its inital incarnation, a true non-site in the 2008 California Biennial, consisted of a 3-tiered cold-based operation as follows:

1. Ice Rink (a rink prepared and frozen above a pipework lattice, painted to NHL standards)
2. Beer Fridge (the largest refrigerator of the plant loaded with 3000 cases of ice-cold beer).
3. Production Freezer (Operatives in cold-safe worksuits create skulptural forms from block ice).

As these processes were to remain unseen by human eyes, the plant could exist fluidly as a collection of roving anti-social nodes to be reified only through promotional and folkloric outlets, as described: California Biennial 2008 Catalog Interview

To further extend this fluidity (of function and space), the plant was gutted (2011) of its "Gefriermaschinefunktionsteile" (nuts) which are re-installed aboard mobile roadie carts (formerly belonging to Neil Diamond) to initiate and constitute a global distributed network.