It somehow seems appropriate to come full circle and make a last post sitting back at home at my kitchen table.
The journey back was pretty gruelling, made worse by being unused to hoards of people and shops at airports selling stuff that no one really needs. For two and a half months I've been used to not carrying money, mobile phone, or having to negotiate traffic. I've worn the same clothes as every other person at the base, dispensed with make up and lived in rigger boots. It has been incredibly freeing and I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity to dip my toe in the Antarctic.
I've often felt that the stuff of everyday living back in the UK gets in the way of letting go and allowing yourself freefall thinking, having the courage to explore areas you feel unsure about takes time and space. I had a long conversation with Andy one of the scientists on the plane back from Santiago about how its the same for scientists but its an easy thing to avoid by being very busy.
One of the last things I did at Rothera was to give everyone a glass reagent vessel and asked them to fill it with whatever they wanted about themselves/ the antarctic (or to keep it and put paper clips in…….) I wasn't sure if it would be taken seriously but I was overwhelmed by the enthusiasim and thoughtfullness that people approached the task with.
I've definately come back feeling I should be more careful with my mark making in the world.
This is sadly going to be my last entry from Antarctica. I got back from Sky Blue to a barrage of emails and deadlines and reality gripped rather vice like.
I've built my furnace and have had lots of successful firings, from taking 4 hours to get the glass up to a good melting temperature (around 1150 C), I've perfected the burner, flue and insulation combo to now only take 2 and a half hrs….and believe me when you're sitting outside on a pile of stones in the cold Antarctic sleety snow (tues) waiting, it makes a difference.
It seems very appropriate that trying to make usable glass here is an uphill challenge. The beer/wine bottles melted down make really shitty difficult to work glass, when the glass is finally at a temp to use, the cold wind is very efficient at cooling everything down again…. very quickly. But everything about human presence here is a challenge, we're basically just not supposed to be here…..why should it be anything other than hard?
I pulled lots of thin glass strands yesterday with Kai the pissed off plumber and used them interactively around the base. This morning I walked to the bay past Weddell and Elephant seals in my orange boiler suit to go and collect some chunks of sea ice to use with the molten glass, thinking to myself 'where else in the world would I be doing something like this?' and it was beginning to feel normal.
One of the scientific programmes in BAS uses a lot of ice core samples, the different layers record different environmental changes and the air spaces in between the ice crystals contain gasses particular to a given time……dinosaur breath?….. With the help of Andy I managed to saw/drill out a sample of my own from the blue ice at Sky blue (which had filled itself in in less than 24hrs). I'm going to send it back to Cambridge with the scientific ice samples, it already looks different…..a big rough hewn chunk as oppose to the rows of neat tubular columns. I'm going to do lots of my own tests on it and use it in combination with video.
Being an artist here has often seemed beside the point. The Antarctic is the point, it should always win, it does everything you could possibly imagine from subtle mark makings to crashing over exuberance…it fills you up inside your head and soul but simultaneously strips you bare leaving you standing reeling trying to work it all out.
