the explorers journal the global adventure issue - The Explorers Club

the world, particularly those in Patagonia, whichI did in 2002. After that project, I continued tofocus on environmental issues.JS: How did you choose Antarctica as a “canvas”for your work?AJ: I had been in contact with scientists from theDirección Nacional del Antártico, Argentina, whohad been carrying out climate research in Antarcticafor many years. I knew that vast expanses ofice had been melting at an alarming rate with thetemperature on the Antarctic Peninsula slowly risingbecause of climate change and I felt it wasimportant to do what I could to heighten publicawareness of this. I decided to actually make artthere. I was excited by the notion of going Antarcticato set up video installations and carry outperformances on the ice.JS: Am I correct in imagining that there were technicalchallenges involved in producing these works?AJ: I knew from the beginning it wouldn`t be aneasy project to develop. I had to transport a lotof equipment to Antarctica—high-resolution andluminosity projectors, audio equipment, and a lotof accessories. Antarctica is the largest deserton Earth and, paradoxically, it is also the world’slargest reservoir of fresh water. There’s no clock,meteorology sets the time. There’s no money, nocurrency, no business, or stores. Beautiful landscapesare changing all the time. For an artist, itis truly a blank canvas. Despite its tranquility, it isalso an ailing world. The goal of the entire projectwas to highlight the effect of climate change onthe environment and its degradation with the appearanceof methane gas particles on the surface,and the disintegration of the Larsen Ice Shelf.JS: So how many works were you able to createthere and were they all done on one trip?AJ: I have made four trips to Antarctica duringwhich I have been able to project two videos Ihad made in Buenos Aires onto the ice, using differentback drops. We have also carried out twoperformances on the ice, which we recorded. Thefirst, in 2004, was at Esperanza Base on the AntarcticPeninsula. There, members of the communitymoved in the dark, carrying torches, towardthe glacier base some 2,000 meters away, theirfootprints in fresh snow making a kind of path thatwould be visible in the next day’s morning light. Iprojected images of sunflowers and fire 100 metershigh and 60 meters wide onto the ice. As thepeople walked up the glacier, they zigzagged inthe snow, playing and skipping. Then I projectedthe images of sunflowers and fire onto their orangegarments. For the audio portion, music wasplayed at full volume to match the saturated colorsof the images. In the film, the sunflowers eventuallycatch fire, burning one after the other until thewhole field of flowers becomes a huge, devastatingblaze, which then dies out. It was snowing andthere was no wind; it was an astonishing night.In February 2005, we had a snowmobile crewtake us up the same glacier, where we carriedout our performance called “Red”—recorded withvideo and still cameras. There, we unfurled an80-meter-long piece of red tulle over the glacier’ssurface. The fabric was unfolded on the snow by aperformer dressed in red. Red symbolized the ideaof a wound, blood, heat, pain, the human essence,contrasting with the purity of the ice.In January and February 2006, on my third offour expeditions to Antarctica, I carried out differentperformances that form part of my “Methane”series. I used different colored tulle—in poisonousviolet, fluorescent orange, and light blue—forthis series of videos, which we recorded during astorm, we let the tulle trail through the air, a metaphorfor toxic gases spreading everywhere.JS: Has it been easy to find support for your project?AJ: I received the Guggenheim Fellowship for theproject, which was made under the auspices ofDirección Nacional del Antárctico and the ProgramaAntárctico Argentino. The pieces createdduring the project have been shown in Rotterdam,New York, Montreal, and Buenos Aires.JS: So what is next?AJ: My next project will focus on what I call theinvisible forest, the phytoplankton—the first sequencein the food chain—and how it is modifiedby climate change and pollution.I n f o r m a t i o nAndrea Juan is a member of the Argentine Association: Tierrade Exploradores (Land of Explorers) www.landofexplorers.org. An exhibition of her work will be on view at the Econcentroin Puerto Madryn, Patagonia, Argentina, through March 2008.the explorers journal