ART+SAILING+SCIENCE = I’m happy
This has been a dream of mine for a long time and finally is happening.
I have been invited to participate in The Arctic Circle 2015; an artist and scientist led expedition to the High Arctic, October 3rd to October 21st, 2015.
I’ll be traveling with other artist and scientist to the international territory of Svalbard, a mountainous Arctic archipelago just 10 degrees from the North Pole !!!
Here is a link to the program : http://www.thearcticcircle.org
Here is my project proposal in the work as we speak:
Sailors reads their surrounding observing ephemeral, ever ganging elements often invisible to the common eyes. This is how they trace a path, or course, positioning it self as an interface between their natural surroundings and their boat.
Similarly, as an artist, I become or create an public interface of dialog with my surroundings using a combination of performance, installation, sculpture, architecture, technology and photography.
Coming form a family of sailors and being a sailor, the north pole represents one the ultimate exploratory frontier.
Sailors lost lives and ships wracked venturing into this sea of ice; searching for the unknown, fame and shorter routs around the Americans to stimulate fanatical growth.
However, In the name of the same fanatical growth this passages are now melting. The north passage is no longer a symbol of erotic achievements, but also a symbol of ecological and financial crises.
As waters becomes accessible, cargo ship venture north and wars on the ownership of these unclaimed waters begins. Speculator and lobbies asks questions such: Who’s land are these? Do we have right on it? How much profit can one make?
Maps are redrawn, history get lost, while the ecological and economical impact of this changes effects the lives of us all.
But what is the north pole today? How we negotiate between its majesty and cruelty? Can we unveil its poetry? Its contradictory nature? Its history? How its landscape moves us, specks to us, Connects and Competes with us? And how do I tell this story?
These questions attracts the artist and the sailor.
It draws me north, just as the gravitational pole attracts the needle of a compass.
With this residency I want to navigate the north sea in the attempt to draw a path, or curse of dialog, between us and this distant land.