According to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, the southern continent is reserved for peaceful scientific enquiry. Owned by no individual or nation (with sovereign claims suspended), its legal-institutional framework is arguably the most successful example of international cooperation in modern history. Given that the treaty was established at the height of the Cold War, this fact is doubly impressive.1 The exclusive right that this document accords scientific enterprise, incorporating a proscription against the exploitation of natural resources, is justly celebrated as a model for global conservation initiatives. However, in a deeper sense, the treaty can be viewed as having further implications: namely, as amounting to a foundational document for a new form of universal community. Indeed, the treaty asserts a supranational project based on cooperation and a sophisticated regard for ecology whose relevance is not limited to activities on the continent itself. It represents, we contend, the kernel of an emerging (global) social contract and, as such, promises a new cultural identity. The establishment of the Antarctic Biennale was ventured in the belief that this identity requires new images; that the Antarctic Imaginary requires more intensive exploration, and that artists, backed by a non-governmental platform, have a fundamental role to play.
In 19th and early 20th century, the poles served as a geographical limit or ‘outside’ that threw the (Euro-American) ‘inside’ into relief. At this time national identity was inherently bound up in the exploratory enterprise – colonial self-image sharpened through exemplary ordeals beyond the hearth: ‘Men Wanted for a hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success’. Such was Shackleton’s call to Endurance , crystallizing the period virtues of stoicism and bravery in the so-called Heroic Age; wherein mastery over the whole globe, and the poles in particular, was to underscore the fundamental decency of imperium.2
Today, Euro-American public perception of the poles is more conflicted. Almost daily, we receive forboding reports of collapsing ice sheets, increased carbon dioxide, climate change and species collapse. The poles have – under this condition – ceased to be a beyond: instead, they appear to be just another register of where we have come from – exhaust fumes from city cars captured in ice bubbles, as far away from any metropole as it it possible to be on earth. And yet, even amid such disenchantment, we may discern an eschatological current at work. Today, the polar scientist is a fact-telling hero, tasked with disabusing blissful ignorance – by delivering statements about ‘civilization’s’ impact upon the globe. The heroic aspect of his profile, in public perception, lies in a ‘truth shall set you free’ ideology that rolls the promise of mankind’s living in ecological balance with the planet into the assimilation of a pure scientific outlook. The heroic champions of this perspective engage in the constant gathering of data, upon which – at some point in the future – good decisions leading to harmony, can be based. As a man whose present activities bear upon the great future project, the scientist’s virtue (and that of ‘pure science’) stands outside immediate time. As such, he may penetrate ice crusts and scale peaks, he may build research stations in pristine territories, here and now – without guilt or egoism. Moreover, we – who cannot understand the detail of his methods – must let him continue and get out of his way. It would seem that defining the polar enterprise belongs to him alone.3
Isn’t this as it should be? Only if we refuse to look too deeply into the matter. In fact, this vision of the poles as a font of wisdom, tended by a hermeneutic oligopoly, tends to naturalize (and occlude) a geopolitical state of affairs that is not as pristine as the scientific heroism it patronizes.4 ‘Pure science’ is a useful cover for attempts to discover and perhaps one day lay claim to strategic resources by governments, as its pursuit furnishes both a palatable narrative frame and real groundwork for (future) industrial enterprise. The former organizes public perceptions (by seeming to ethically transcend the here and now), while the latter helps to organize real space. It is all too convenient that the state organs which monopolize Antarctic activity reduce the image polar enterprise to one of pure virtue, repressing questions of geostrategy, even as the scientists maintain good intentions.5 As the above indicates, while the Antarctic Imaginary may belong to everyone, control over the regime of images issuing from this region is centralized. How might we picture a broader spectrum of polar reality – and imagine our stake it, as well as its stake in our planet’s future? The answer to this question must be approached by considering the access infrastructures which underpin image making in Antarctica. In a region whose only permanent structures are maintained by national agencies, at present, almost all image production is the result of ‘embedded’ projects, wherein the cultural producer is attached to a government/scientific apparatus, often on the proviso that their agenda engage the ‘useful’ research being carried out.6 It is a related story for for journalism.7 Between this situation and the formatted commissioning constraints of broadcast media/entertainment, the ‘important’ and easily digestible frames of communicating science occupy centre stage. Accordingly, as I have elsewhere argued, the new Antarctic Imaginary will not be developed by the traditional broadcast media. Neither will it be nurtured by tourism (with its emphasis on private experience and a preponderance of clichés). In these ways, infrastructural limits to geographical access circumscribe the global field of polar cultural production. Within this structural condition there is little place for non-debentured, heterogeneous, representations of the Antarctic Imaginary – no bottom up – and the artist is sidelined; a token at best.
Why is this a problem? First, because even if we value ecological lessons above others, standard commissioning strategies and (formatted) distribution channels cannot help but produce a jaded audience. Statistical proof of climate change and picturesque photographs of threatened glaciers can only be so effective in holding public consciousness over time.8 However, beyond polishing up established virtues, there is more to play for. There is a reason to locate the artist and the question of culture more centrally in the polar context. Not least, because, art takes us to new places – to those we never knew existed, and ones we could not imagine otherwise. It helps us to discover the wonderful, strange, or new aspects of things we think we already know. Artists are explorers, charting their own courses through our world as domain of representation. Truly great artists sweep us up in their journeys – whether they be physical, conceptual or emotional – and carry us to new shores of knowing. It is essential that we look at art in this way – as opposed to viewing it as mere decoration, shallow distraction, or a cynical market phenomenon. Today, we need artists to supply us with visions of who we are and what we want to be; of how the polar world is, and what it could become. We need art to uncover what else Antarctica is about, and how we may all partake of an Antarctic culture that is globally transformative. We need to offer artists a larger stake in the southern polar region.
Even before the commissioning of individual artworks, the establishment of the Antarctic Biennale was ventured as an assertion of Antarctica’s status as a potent cultural paradigm. In part, our operation proceeded according to the idea that Antarctica affords an imaginary that is most prescient yet underexplored: Following the USSR’s collapse the figure of the New Soviet Man was consigned to the scrapheap. Almost immediately, the American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama proposed liberal democracy as the ‘final model’ for the ‘coherent and directional’ development of civil organization; the history (of competing formats) had ended, he argued, and the Liberal-democratic subject was the ‘Last Man’ standing.9 Today, this is a wholly discredited idea. Foregrounding the (otherwise) repressed cultural dimensions of Antarctica through the proposition of a festival, our action issued from the hypothesis that Antarctic Man is a plausible world-historical successor. Beyond abstract formulation, this political subject outstrips (in legal principle) the paradigm of the nation state. This subject also incorporates a holistic view of the planet as a complex – unified – system. Furthermore, with regard to an anthropological frame, it is a worthy hypothesis: More than a century after man (men) first set foot there, Antarctica sustains a population of 1162 throughout the sunless winter and 4000 in the summer months. Given the time that has elapsed and the amount of human activity, why not speak culture (beyond official mission structures) peculiar to Antarctica? Perhaps, therefore, we should view it as the last terrestrial new world. Might not activities in Antarctica amount to a whole new set of customs, architectures and attitudes, of relevance beyond the bases? Exploring this idea, our biennale was ventured as a (post)nation-building initiative – a manifestly cultural festival of and in Antarctica.
Proceeding according to this outlook, the biennale’s pre-expedition communications maintained that Antarctica is underexploited. Not in a physical sense, but as field of visual and conceptual enquiry. The contours of Antarctic Man lack clarity, and are only being discovered in a haphazard manner. If we are to realize Antarctica’s potential for those who cannot go then cultural workers must seize the means of south polar (image) production. In our view, it is only through intensified (and truly independent) engagement with Antarctica that we may discover – through aesthetic experimentation – its otherwise inaccessible intellectual, social and political topography. It is this landscape that offers the most promising ground for harvesting radical images. Given the lack of an extant academic project addressing Antarctic Art History, the creation of a biennale assumes the character of a demand that this be undertaken.10
In addition to the inspiration supplied by Antarctica’s supranational administration, we deemed creating an independent platform from which to engage with the continent’s environment and science as timely. We will not see ourselves as one until we can view the biosphere, which encompasses our civilization as much as it does icebergs, as an integrated unit. Statistical proof of climate change and picturesque photographs of glaciers and penguins can only be so effective in altering the global public’s self-image. The world requires a new regime of interdisciplinary image making from below, and the overdetermined outcomes of government-run residencies are not enough. Bringing together artists, scientists and thinkers, the 1st Antarctic Biennale was established not just to cultivate artists’ engagements with a space reserved for ‘science’, but to widen the scope of what is considered cultural while subjecting techno-scientific (post)sovereignty to a gentle challenge. This is to say, the biennale was as much about making visible (exhibiting) an image of a new cultural institution as a series of art objects.
With a limited on-site audience – indeed, with only participants present – the biennale departed from standard models of perennial exhibition making and viewing. As such, it was also the calculated performance of a leap beyond the luxury ghetto of what passes for the contemporary artworld. Doesn’t the very term ring sweaty when mentioned in the same breath as the Ross Ice Shelf? Something other than miles separates this paradigm from the polar one. We who walk the baking flagstones of San Marco, who press flesh at the prosecco intermezzo – where chatter flits from the surface of the artwork to the decoration of the palazzo and the cut of dresses – are very far removed from encounters with the non man-made environment. In fact, the Venice Biennale – the world’s oldest and most prestigious of art festival – takes place amid entirely constructed terrain, where there are more stone carvings of flowers than real ones. Against the pageant supplied by this model biennale, Antarctica is a place that does not forgive hubris easily; a place where people sometimes eat their boots to avoid starving (and where sometimes expecting ice is too much).11 “This is a biennale ‘upside down’”, said Ponomarev. “Instead of the usual national pavilions – the icy inaccessibility of the Antarctic continent. Instead of pompous apartments and hotel rooms – ascetic cabins. Instead of chaotic wanderings, through receptions and tourist filled streets – a dialogue with Big Nature, and an explosion of consciousness facilitated through the dialogues with scientists, futurists, and technological visionaries.” As we conceived it, the Antarctic Biennale platform floated an image of succession from the hothouse of subterranean commercial dealing, spectacle, and social climbing that envelops the art of our times. The question of whether one can, or must, live up to an image remains open, however.
As the above indicates, the 1st Antarctic Biennale was, both literally and metaphorically, a vehicle for facilitating independent cultural production in the South Polar Region. It was a mechanism for expanding the Antarctic Imaginary through aesthetic exploration and interdisciplinary encounters that pursued ‘culture’ in an expanded field that was not only limited to art. It was a supranational initiative committed to the possibility of a universal community that encompasses not just people but the environment too. The theme for the first edition borrowed Captain Nemo’s motto from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: ‘Mobilis in Mobile’, meaning ‘moving amidst mobility’. Traversing the Southern Ocean, passing through the Bransfield Straight, between craggy peaks and glaciers, down through the Lemaire Channel, and into the Antarctic Circle, it was an expedition as festival. But the movements to which the title referred also encompass a trajectory through shifting currents in climate science, changes in ice-sheet cover, the continent’s geophysical dynamism, and biological upheaval. Lastly, the title embraced a movement – or vector – cutting across developments within various disciplinary spheres. On board the biennale’s expedition vessel, the Akademik Sergei Vavilov, there was a mixture of artists, architects scientists and philosophers who were engaged, daily, in dialogue and creative collaboration.
The 1st Antarctic Biennale was a paradigm-shifting phenomenon in the globalhistory of art. Its inaugural edition, as well as the events leading up to and following it, aimed to rewrite the function of exploration in the 21st Century. Passionate about the potential that the Antarctic Imaginary holds, for exiting polarized identity politics, and ecological insensitivity in public culture, we proposed a voyage to the end of the earth. It is our belief that this remote region must be made more proximate; that the last continent is a fertile site for new beginnings.