Abstract
Since the first human being set foot on the continent of Antarctica in the early nineteenth century, explorers, scientists and artists have responded to its vast, sublime expanse through the written word, visual expression, music and song. Over the last few decades, artists have begun to explore bodily-kinaesthetic engagement with the landscape itself—expressed through movement, dance and performance. “Figures in a Landscape” examines the varied approaches, sensibilities and work of choreographer Christina Evans, performance artists Shakti Avattar León, Verena Stenke and Andrea Pagnes (VestAndPage)––four artists who have direct experience of working in Antarctica. The chapter is a closely keyed description and discussion of a selection of Antarctic works based mostly on their voices, writings, interviews, conversations, correspondence, documentary video and still imagery.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Andrea Juan, artist and former Cultural Program Curator at the Dirección Nacional del Antártico in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for her vision and for her support of residencies for Shakti Avattar León and VestAndPage. She was also responsible for introducing them to me and for facilitating conversations and collaborations with all of the artists whose work provides the focus of this chapter. My thanks to Mónica González, a student in the Audio Arts Graduate Program at Syracuse University, for her assistance translating Spanish correspondence from León. My deep gratitude to Carolyn Philpott whose idea it was to invite me to contribute this chapter and for her friendship, guidance, editorial input and support at every step of the process. Finally, thanks to the artists themselves whose work inspired me to write and for their patience in answering my numerous questions and generous spirit in sharing insight into their practice and creative lives.
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Quin, D. (2020). Figures in a Landscape. In: Philpott, C., Leane, E., Delbridge, M. (eds) Performing Ice. Performing Landscapes. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47388-4_3
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