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Antarctica

Antarctica is a body of work developed from an expedition to Antarctica in 2007 that was exhibited for the first time at Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy in 2008. The focus of the exhibition was on providing a place of encounter for people to develop a new bio-political imagination. Developing out of the experimental ‘Antarctica Village No Borders’ and influenced by the political aesthetics of B. Petromarchi, in which art is seen as a function capable of changing the way reality is looked at and interpreted, Antarctica was selected as a subject because it demonstrates the continuous advance of the effects of global warming. The region is also symbolic as it is the last example of an environment which has not yet been subjected to exploitation, a geopolitical exception.

Amongst the work that had their first public showing in this exhibition was ‘Antarctica Village No Borders’, ‘Life Line-Survival Kits’, ‘Drop Parachutes’, and ‘World passport, Antarctica Mobile Delivery Bureau’. The passport bureau was designed to deliberately resemble the makeshift checkpoint reminiscent of those found on borders of conflict zones. The passports resemble a travel document, each uniquely numbered. Data collected from these has been transferred to a digital platform at: http://www.antarcticaworldpassport.com.

The work toured in various forms across Europe (Italy, France, Sweden, Norway, Greece and the Netherlands) and to the 9th Shanghai Bienniale, China, in 2012. Presentations included additional work such as ‘Antarctica Metisse Flag’ which also had a manifestation in the form of forty four 4 x 6 metre flags displayed on the roof of the South Bank Centre, London, in 2012. It resulted in invitations to speak at the Urban Design Lab, New York; the European Cultural Parliament, Liverpool; MIT, Boston; Tufts University Gallery and Wesleyan University, USA.