ART I N AN TA R C T I C A , A SE R I E S O F CO N F E R E N C E S … P. 4 @rt Outsiders September 2008 - 9th year www.art-outsiders.com Tel : +33 (0)1 44 78 75 00 Maison Européenne de la Photographie 5-7 rue de Fourcy – 75 004 Paris M° Saint-Paul ou Pont-Marie / Bus 67, 69, 96 ou 76 I N T E R P O L A R A RT 24 September 2008 - 12 October 2008 with Marko Peljhan and Annick Bureaud, Bureau d’études, Ewen Chardronnet, Andrea Polli, Catherine Rannou. The extreme in the centre by Annick Bure a u d rom the very first polar expeditions, artists have contributed to the imaginary surrounding the FEarth’s “extremities” and their work has fed a sense of the sublime and of romanticism. Such a romantic vision endures, fuelled by adventurers of the extreme, who set out crossing, alone, the antarctic continent, the touching (and a n t h ropomorphic) image of penguins, the deadly beauty of the environment conveyed by thousands of images of “icy white”, and by the fact that Antarctica is now threatened by global warming and our pollution, that this last huge, supposedly virg i n , territory is in danger. To create in or about Antarctica today is as much a political as an artistic act, just as it was in the 19th or early 20th century. Except today the continent faces quite a diff e r ent reality and our approaches are p r obably more varied, more contradictory, more complex; burdened with numerous clichés all the I-TASC - The Arctic Perspective more enduring for being mostly true. Current artistic practices are diverse in terms of the Arctic and the added value of that an open content as well as medium, but all show commitment: by Marko Peljhan & i n f r a s t ru c t u re of new communications and inform a t i o n creating in Antarctica makes one a player rather than technology can provide. a mere witness. The four artists, or groups of artists, in Matthew Biederm a n The Arctic is one of the zones of crucial contemporary this conference series entitled “Art in Antarctica” are nuit are more likely to have an immediate, which is geopolitical controversy and simultaneously a space with an exemplary in the variety of their approaches and by to say unmediated perception of the surrounding o p p o r tunity for transnational, circ u m p o l a r, and the issues they raise, each one echoing the others: “Ienvironment and living things within it. We to the i n t e rcultural cooperation and collaboration. In view of the climate changes and more broadly relationship to the south are all but wholly insulated from the local landscape, e ffects of climate change, the indiscriminate economic ecosystem, data processing and data “perc e p t i o n - and from what we are doing to both domesticated animals and exploitation of untapped re s e rvoirs of energy and natural understanding”, national organization of bases on a wildlife. Our perceptions of “the environment” are heavily re s o u rces in the polar regions is increasingly feasible and continent where state possession is banned, habitat mediated by the mass media, which report about global inevitable. Unfort u n a t e l y, because of vested geopolitical issues, Antarctica as a life-size laboratory and what is warming in particular. Nevertheless, the array of climate and economic interest, all of this is happening without at stake there from a geostrategic perspective, the opinion and the various uses it’s put to are broadly the same in taking into account that there is a determined culture vision of a global world emerging from the heart of North and South. We to the south may therefore learn inhabiting the whole of the circumpolar continental isolation. Artists today work towards “putting the poles something about ourselves from an understanding of how t e r ritories. Through the spectacular placement of a in the centre”. Inuit process climate-related inform a t i o n . ” (Franklyn titanium Russian flag on the seabed at the North Pole in Griffiths, Camels in the Arctic?, Climate change as Inuit 2007, the Arctic was symbolically once again catapulted see it: “from the inside out”; Walrus, November 2007) into global public awareness. Russia’s recent activities, which have been going on since 2001, together with Annick Bureaud, lives an works in Paris. New media art The project we have been working on since 2007 dire c t s C a n a d a ’s delayed political responses and specifically the critic and theoretician, director of Leonard o / O l a t s attention to the global cultural and ecological delayed implementation of previously signed native (www.olats.org). s i g n i ficance of the polar regions, with a special focus on a g reements (i.e. the Kelowna Accord), …Followed page 2 MAKROLAB markI, Lutterberg, DE, 1997 EPTAP, 1999 are indicators of the shifting geopolitical significance of extended for use by future use by a variety of One of the inspirations for the project is provided by more the Arctic and of the shifting relationship between the organizations, and individuals for use within native, than ten years of activity of the mobile, autonomous and North and the South. Land and epi-continental claims scientific, cultural and academic projects and activities. sustainable re s e a rch station Makrolab. Sited at the seem to bypass and ignore the impact on Northern In this way, the mobile, on-land media centric unit, with intersection of art, technology and science, Makrolab was Native Cultures almost completely. The radical the establishment of an open communications created by a large interdisciplinary arts/engineering team ecological and resulting cultural changes taking place in infrastructure, will serve as a model for an empowered in Slovenia. It has been operating from 1997 to 2007 and the North are in our opinion central to a critical mediated mobility for the Inuit, which is one of the has been set up in remote locations in Germ a n y, understanding of planet Earth as a complex system. primary long term aims of the project. Slovenia, Australia, Scotland, Italy and the United In light of this, the Interpolar Transnational Art Science States. The final vision of Makrolab operations, has Constellation (I-TASC) in conjunction with the With a focus on the creation of an inclusive working always been establishment of a permanent, collaborative, Consortium Transnational Art Science Circumpolaire model, the collaboration among northern and southern art/science infrastructure in the Arctic and Antarctic ( C - TASC), has proposed and is working toward s experts will produce a true spirit of knowledge sharing beyond 2007. In addition to providing a means for establishing the framework conditions for collaborative and exchange, pre s e r ving native expertise while technological innovation, the project served as a platform projects between aboriginal cultures, artists, hunters, augmenting it through an open technological for interd i s c i p l i n a ry and transdisciplinary exchange, scientists, tactical media workers and engineers in the i n f r a s t ru c t u r e. The content produced through the providing creative conditions for joint teams of artists and A rctic within three broad topical fields: migration, initiative will be open-source, co-managed by I-TASC, scientists to work on the wide and global topics. While I- climate and telecommunications. These three fields, C-TASC and local community members in the north TASC and C-TASC on the one hand conclude the ten- understood both in scientific and poetic terms, share and south, and made available worldwide. Through this year Makrolab process, their foundation opens up new complex mathematics, a changing and dynamic matrix model of information sharing and exchange, a valuable areas of geographical and conceptual action. and global reach. For the purposes of this interpretation, history will be written and preserved and will result in The project is centered around the Method of Artistic we see these fields wider, with migrations including the the establishment of an open communications Research, which is currently playing a major role in the migration of flora, fauna, people, ideas and capital flows, infrastructure, presentation and learning websites and field of conveying and appropriating innovative with both climate and telecommunications are workshops, videos, real-time audio-video stre a m i n g experience of the world. Heid and John (2003) wrote the understood also very widely for the purpose of striving to events, the publication of a series of ‘cahiers’, as well as following on contemporary artistic strategies: establish a common projection of the complex links public events and exhibitions in the North, and a variety “Artists are expanding their space of action by means of between these diverse territories and their connected of international venues, including Greenland, Iceland, diverse interventionist strategies. They no longer feel impact. The activities of the two organizations are based Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and Australasia. bound to an object-centered art market but instead find on the development, installation and deployment of and invent operative, process-based forms in their mobile, sustainable, zero-impact modular research units, In our eyes, the distinction between artistic and scientific cooperation with partners in all areas of society. o p e n - s o u rce ICT (Information and Communications creativity is minimal.