I am talking in this context of animating in the original sense, of bringing to life, breathing life into (inspiring), a place that is pretty dead. (Global warming can change that. But we may not be around to see Antarctica’s first flower.)
To really know a place you need to see it, hear it, smell it and feel it. And when you can’t connect physically first hand, you can gain some sense of it through the voices of those who have.
When I was very young, the artist William Kelly told me that you need to get to know something if you want to draw it, and at the same time, to draw something is another way to know it.
Sculptor Lenton Parr said that making art is a dialogue you have with the subject, the materials at hand, and the piece you are building. Your artwork is finished when the dialogue is over, and the piece speaks for itself. It has a voice of its own, that can be interpreted in other ways by other people. (These were my teachers at art school.)
My six week voyage (V7 2002) was not enough to know Antarctica. When I was there I drew, and painted, and animated bits, and made some video and sound recordings. I wrote. I asked questions of scientists and other expeditioners, I walked on the rock and ice, and felt the wind and the water of Antarctica. I learned more about what I didn’t know, from listening to the voices of the people who had stayed there, working through the long winters, measuring, and experiencing, the changes in its landscape. And sometimes I’d be told about their life-changing experiences.
And others who have experienced, and responded to Antarctica, as artists, scientists and travelers, can show us different perspectives of the landscape.
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Antarctica is at the very edge of the world as we know it. It’s landscape represents the very edge of the unknown.
I need to work with personal experiences within my myself, to identify with the changes being measured and experienced there.
How I can do this:
Improvise.
Move, draw, write and animate:
to the sound of my father’s teleprinter (relaying messages from Antarctica)
to the voices of expeditioners (poetic and scientific responses)
to the landscape itself (as remembered)