Daniel MacIsaac
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Feb 04/00) - Many Inuvik residents were surprised to receive a plea of assistance from Germany last week.

The call came in the form of e-mail messages from two Bavarian artists, Andreas Uhlich and Markus Kuhn.

"In the summer of 1999 we came to Inuvik to plan and organize a trip to the MacKenzie River delta," they wrote, "during the following months (July and August) we built a sculpture on a sandbank in the Main Channel. This sculpture was made out of logs and is about nine metres high and 25 metres wide."

The Germans went on to say that while they took many photos of the structure called "Arche 2000," or Ark 2000, they're hoping some Delta residents can travel to the Main Channel and photograph it by winter, before spring break-up carries it off.

The summer pictures are available on the pair's Kuhlworks German-language Web site at www.kuhlworks.de and shows an impressive sculpture that stands out majestically against the stark beauty of the Delta.

Further communication revealed that the pair, Uhlich, 32, and Kuhn, 34, live in Hassfurt, just outside Munich, and run two different but related businesses -- promoting art projects and building houses.

"The initial ideas for the project Arche 2000 originally came in 1993 and had been to build an ark in which the worths, values and ideals of the human race could be transported toward the 21st century," says Kuhn.

"However, in the course of the following years I more and more abandoned these values since I'm not sure whether they can be maintained or preserved in a post-modern world -- this is the reason why the final sculpture remains empty."

The pair say the reaction of their friends and Web-site visitors "can be described as generally positive," and that they've even been asked to discuss the ark at a local university.

The reaction in Inuvik has been mixed. No one with the exception of Great Northern Arts Festival co-ordinator Marilyn Dzaman, who met the Germans on their arrival last summer, had heard of the ark, let alone seen it.

Coun. Gary Smith told the town about it at last week's council meeting and seemed to voice the doubts of everyone in the room when he said, "I'm blown away by the time some people have to waste."

Dzaman, however, had only positive things to say about the creative and temporary undertaking, but added she was too busy last summer to actually get out to the site -- located 67 degrees north (longitude) and 134 degrees west (latitude).

"I think there is something very powerful about constructing something that is so beautiful and so much a part of the landscape, and then giving it up to the land," she said. "They're taking something from the land and giving it right back ... it's from the land, of the land and back to the land," said Dzaman.

To the skeptics, Kuhn said, "While some people will always claim that artists have too much time on their hands," he says, "I believe art is probably one of the most important means which can keep alive the hope that mankind needs in our modern society."