The opening of Sur Polar Buenos Aires.
Around 400 people attended the opening of Sur Polar last night, and 200 filled the auditorium for today’s presentations. Scientists and artists who had worked in Antarctica presented in Spanish, or via a translator from French or English.
After so much preparation, and discussion with the other artists these past few days, I found it strangely easy to throw away the script I had prepared for Spanish translation. The translator spoke English so fluently, he set an easy pace. This allowed for simple word phrasing and more visual communication, through gesture and the screened animations.
A young woman approached me afterwards. In broken English, she described her work with dance and art and animation. Tomorrow we go to a movement improvisation performance, El juego delast The Game of Elastics, at the Centro Cultural Cooperation.
Then we will go to a free Tango jam in a local park.
Sounds like you are having a wonderful time amongst peers…
It’s been an extraordinary experience to find so many points of connection between the artists who have worked in Antarctica // more than I can possibily write immediately. There is much I am thinking, and feeling, and drawing.
The artists here speak about how connected they felt, in Antarctica, with the landscape, and with the world as a whole, in a most expansive way…
Phil Dadson speaks about feeling being on the Earth’s surface, revovling…while watching the sun dip …tip…the horizon…a sense of really being on a moving planet.
My own experience, of standing there, feeling *not just knowing ( …that everywhere else and everyone else …is around you, in all directions…was validated by talking with them and seeing their work.
I am seeing how experiencing the Antarctic landscape has inspired us all to look at THIS world with new eyes. It is not so much about making images of a Antarctic landscapes as of looking into ourselves, the human mindscape. It’s a place where you completely get outside of the usual ways we look at reality.
I wish I could show you some pictures I have taken of the work. You will see more shortly when I have access to an English speaking computer!
There was an intense feeling of understanding between us as we spent the week together, helping to set up our work in the gallery, living together in the same hotel, and sharing experiences.
Tonight I leave for London. One of our artists, Philippe Boissonet, has left already to show work there… in a show called Electric Blue. I will see him there! I will also meet up with our French arts writer in London, and possibly spend a day with her in Paris…seeing how the money goes!
I have seen some extraordinary theatre and art and dance here…in the streets and in the large arts complexes.
Buenos Aires is a place of extremes…of rich and poor. There are many words people use in Spanish for poor … like the words for ice that have evolved in Inuit language. There is so much poverty … nuances in the language express its depth.
I have traveled in a boat along the delta, where waterways replace roads, and people live amongst the forest.
Spending time with the people who organised the event … with their families…their children…I sense their connections with each other, and their landscape. The Argentinian expression of connection felt between people is the Tango…felt through the eyes and body…visceral. I danced the Tango, with a very young man, and then with a very old man. Both extraordinary in that we were dancing for the dance itself. It was as if we danced to keep the dance alive. It reminded me of how knowledge of land and beast connections in Australia are transmitted through Aboriginal dance.
Argentinians know they are connected with Antarctica…the physical extension of their country.