In March of this year, fifty brightly coloured dome tents landed on the white
ice caps of Antarctica. The intervention was carried out by Lucy & Jorge Orta.
The film of this project together with examples of the tents, together with
wall sculptures, as well as survival kits are now on show at DSM. The
exhibition provides a glimpse of the visual impact of the impressive
expedition. But, even more, the presentation reveals that the symbolic
implications of the intervention have not lost any strength outside the
boundaries of the distant South Pole region.
The tents, assembled from the flags of different countries, pieces of clothing
and gloves that, through the extended cuffs, have become ‘helping hands’, are
part of ‘Antarctica Village – No Borders’, an ongoing project that was first
shown under the auspices of the ‘First Biennale of the End of the World’
(‘Primera Bienal del Fin del Mundo’, Ushuaia City, Tierra del Fuego,
Argentina, 2007). The mobile architectural structures provided metaphorical
shelter for the ever-growing number of refugees worldwide resulting from wars,
natural disasters, economic problems and religious and social persecution. For
the unremitting stream of migrants who are denied social and political rights.
Studio Orta has declared Antarctica, the furthest point of the world, as their
refuge.
Besides the dome tents, they planted a flag in which different national
symbols are merged together (‘Métisse Flag’). Studio Orta also designed a
passport for the ‘nation without borders’ (‘Antarctica World Passport’), and
organized a football match between Argentineans and Britons to mark the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the Falklands War between Argentina and Britain.
Both teams wore shirts bearing their ‘own’ flag on the front and that of ‘the
other’ on the back. This meant that the players were well nigh
interchangeable. Spectators, too, are confronted with the fact that the
players are not recognizable by random factors like colour of a shirt or the
symbol of a sovereign nation (‘Heads of Tails vs. Tails or Heads’). As part of
‘Antarctica Village – No Borders’, Lucy & Jorge Orta advocate adding an
amendment to the constitution (clause 13.3), stipulating that every individual
should be allowed to move freely in the same way as goods and economic
services. Through the intervention of ‘Antarctic Village – No Borders’, the
line separating ‘here’ and ‘there’ in the geographically and politically
extreme territory that the South Pole still is, disappeared – for a moment or
for longer?
At DSM headquarters Heerlen the OrtaWater project is exhibited. The project
focuses on the general scarcity of water and issues surrounding the
privatization and corporate control effecting access to clean water.
Courtesy art works and text Motive Gallery in Amsterdam.
