In gale winds of 45 miles per hour at a temperature of minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit, 99 blue fiberglass spheres, with diameters ranging from 10 inches to 48 inches have been pinioned on the Ross Ice Shelf, not far from Mount Erebus, in Antarctica. It’s the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, Dec. 22, the longest day of the year in the largest frozen desert in the world.
“Stellar Axis” is the name Lita Albuquerque, an American artist living in Malibu, has chosen for a project that enlisted enthusiastic support and funding from the United States National Science Foundation and enlisted the British astronomer Simon Balm from Topanga, and an international team of four to install and document the project. Sophie Pegrum, a British documentary filmmaker living in Topanga, Lionel Cousin, a French cinematographer living in Italy and Jean de Pomereu, a stills photographer living in London, all joined her on the expedition.
The logistical cost of the project is one million dollars.
This is not Albuquerque’s first expedition; examples of her artistry can be found in the most renowned American cultural sites and museums. In the tradition of Christo and James Turrell, she belongs to the second generation of ephemeral and land artists. Of Tunisian origins, Albuquerque graduated from UCLA and started on her land installations in the mid-70s.
About “Stellar Axis,” she explains: “Each sphere positioned on the ice corresponds to a star invisible but present above the horizon line in this southern sky on this Solstice day/night. By drawing attention to these correspondences I want to encourage the public to look up and out, not in and down; to consider the larger galactic and cosmic movements that lie beyond everyday reality, and to reflect on the energy field that affects our planet.”
Major land art exponents such as Robert Smithson, Walter de Maria, Christo and Turrell were forerunners of the ecological groundswell now occurring, the harbingers of a new kind of ethical thinking. “Stellar Axis” extends this approach by exploring the links between the sidereal and the terrestrial, as well as what links artists and scientists.
In fact, aside from the vividly ephemeral beauty of these blue spheres on a white ground, or the installation’s intellectual and scientific content, “Stellar Axis” announces a sociological upheaval which Kim Silverman, overseeing the project for the National Science Foundation, summarizes in simple terms: “A project such as ‘Stellar Axis’ helps us to find a new language to express the connection between research and creation. To make a wider audience understand the vital importance of a place such as Antarctica, it is not enough to publish statistics proving that the atmosphere is being degraded. We must help people to dream their planet into being. Emotion creates commitment; scientific information is a useful tool.”
That an isolated landmass with the driest and coldest climate on earth, supporting hardly a trace of life, except along its coasts, could be of vital importance to the earth is a difficult paradox to fathom.
De Pomereu, a polar specialist as well as the project’s art photographer, sums up his vision of this land: “Antarctica is the last tabula rasa; the most disembodied of all earthly places, and yet, it is the very incarnation of energy. In the middle of the continent is a place scientists have nicknamed “the fountainhead.” It’s the origin, the ground zero of complexity. Ice masses that have accumulated over hundreds of thousands of years slowly flow out of this site at an imperceptible pace towards coastal extremities to become icebergs there, then water. Here, then begins, the very long story of the cryosphere’s [all aspects of frozen water, such as snow, permafrost, floating ice and glaciers], climatic impact on the atmosphere and biosphere, marine currents, life in the sea and life on earth.
The “Stellar Axis” team, sensitive to climate changes caused by carbon monoxide, will be measuring their carbon footprint made by creating this work, and, to have as low impact on the environment as possible, will plant trees in equivalence in a location to be announced.
Translated from French by Aino Paasonen.