Tue- Fri 10am - 5pm
Sat 11am - 7pm
Sun 11am - 3pm
Mon closed
Night of the Arts, 29.08, 10am - 12pm
Free entry

Jäävalokuvakirjasto (Frozen photographs library) is an installation produced, designed and realised by Eric MUTEL, French Visual Artist, living and working in HELSINKI, FINLAND.

The Jäävalokuvakirjasto is a temporary frozen public collection of public/people pictures.
It is presented on Auroran Kenttä, Töölönlahden Taidepuutarha (Park of the Art, behind Finlandia Talo and VR-makasiinit), in HELSINKI, FINLAND, from 16.08.2002 till 05.09.2002.

The installation is realised with a Reefer container (frozen container for FRET) of 6m lenght, 2m50 width, 2m50 Height, producing a -25 degree celsius atmosphere.
Inside, after 2 transparent plastic doors creating an airlock and an in between space, the public will walk in a small corridor made of 3 walls of ice, as walking between bookshelves in a library.
Those walls are actually iceshelves where will be conserved and exhibited about 25 or 30 cryogenic photographs.
Those are made in a special process, organic photographs inlay into iceblocks, destroyed and fixed by the ice statement, protected and conserved.

The ice walls and pictures are lighted from behind with waterproof fluorescent lights.
The public is invited to enter the inside space of this silver box that is the container, coming from +20/25 degrees to -25 degrees, experimenting a winter time in summer time, entering this timing space where pictures are destroyed and and at the meantime, pure and beautiful.

It's a deep frozen conservation of our memory, inside my own collection.
Allthough the memory looks ultra conserved and protected in its cryogenic statement, it is at the same time, completely organic, fragile and destroyed by the freezing process.
I will allow these pictures and these memories to live again, literally, because of the organic statement i'll give them with the freezing process, and then, possibly, melting process. The pictures will be conserved and literally in expectation of movement and expansion.
It's a process as life is.

This installation is a container, containing, collectionning, cold and conserving, a collection, public?..
It's a box of pictures which contains memory, which are the memory, which become the memory, which protect the memory, against alterity?..
It's a fret container, as marchandise transport, of memory, souvenir, deep frozen food.
It's only a box, a morgue for pictures, a collection at last, but perishable and temporary.
It's a scientific laboratory, which conserve this essential ice, water sample, representation, of body, past, memory.
All are conserved but destroyed. They expect to expand, melt, move, appears for an instant, and at last dissapear.


Expiration date
Parasta ennen 6.9.2002
Bäst före


This installation will be finally loading out of the container and built again outside on September, the 7, in the morning for the last steps of the process, melting and total disappearance.
Melting process outside during the next 3 days.

Bring your winter jacket and earplugs!

This installation has been

Supported with a Public Grants for production by:
-Helsingin Kaupungin Kulttuuriasiainkeskus, (Culture centre of Helsinki city). (www.kulttuuri.hel.fi)

Sponsored by:
-FC Finncontainers OY Ltd, (www.finncontainers.fi)
-Sylvania Lumiance Oy. (www.sylvania-lumiance.fi)

agreed with:
- Helsingin Kaupungin Kiinteistövirasto.


I wish to thanks personnaly all the person from those place mentionned above who's been helping me and who did trust in this project.
I want to thanks all the persons who has been participating as a model for the pictures, my friends who's been also helping me and supported me, and also all those who didn't want to be mentionned.