Climate change is more than an issue for the future – it has been happening for decades. Ski resorts in the Alps, surviving on the basis of winter tourism, have been among the first to feel its effects.
The construction of reservoirs has begun to ensure that the tourist resorts’ economic foundation is not put under increasing threat. Their water is used to produce artificial snow, especially at the start of the ski season. The reservoirs are therefore a compensatory measure, but this is not really obvious as such. They often blend in well with the landscape, and they may even be perceived as natural idylls by guests unaware of the background issues.
At least one of these idylls will be disturbed by the current project entitled “Tomorrow’s Snow”: the popular Hartkaiser Reservoir in Ellmau by the Wilder Kaiser Mountain Range will be exploited for an installation during the summer months of 2025. The idea is to distribute about 200 skis across the surface of the water with around three quarters of their length protruding vertically.
The intention is for the emerging skis to be understood as exclamation marks or memorials. Anyone seeing them in this way, not corresponding at all to their function, may perhaps be alarmed – but can then visualise how dependent skiing is on the availability of snow. As the skis are standing in water, in melted snow, so to speak, the installation helps us to grasp the consequences of climate change. This no longer remains invisible, is no longer camouflaged through the idyll of the reservoir; instead, it takes on a visually intrusive character.
The fact that the vertically floating skis move in the wind or rain, indeed appear generally unstable and fragile, also enables us to grasp them as seismographs of a disturbed, endangered ecosystem. They not only symbolise an already acute crisis, but act as warning signs of an extremely uncertain future.

Wolfgang Ullrich