Neville Gabie - Antarctic residency project
‘My proposed project is based around the idea of making the journey to the Antarctic to fly kites. Perhaps of all recreational activities flying kites is the most playful, even frivolous. It conjures images of warm days, a gentle breeze and colourful shapes dancing above our heads. So flying kites in the Antarctic, even in the summer months, is the antithesis of our expectations. Not only are the weather and wind conditions hostile, but the very idea of ‘recreation’ in the Antarctic seems contrary to the seriousness of the work undertaken there. That is my intention - the aim is to use a simple device, a kite, which most of us are familiar with, as a tool for considering something outside our comprehension. Using small video cameras attached to the kites, I will film the landscape. The resulting footage has less to do with photography, much more to do with exploring the mood or atmosphere of that landscape. With a kite, what is recorded is almost entirely determined by the wind, revealing it both in sound and movement. Flying close to the ground, what is made visible are the ephemeral marks on the surface of the landscape, tyre tracks, foot prints, or the lines of a ski left in the ice; the traces which are often overlooked or left unrecorded. The physical activity of moving through the terrain, of pulling and guiding the kite above my head, is also about filming myself in a landscape I have become visibly part of; a performance. This project develops work that I have already done in Western Australia working with a kite. Although both landscapes appear to be very different, both are deserts with little or no rainfall and both are extremely vulnerable eco-systems where human activity has its greatest visible impact.’ Neville Gabie
