Unpacking Antarctica

Engler Elise, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This project, "An Artist Unpacks Palmer Station" would consist of drawings chronicling an artist?s immersion in this remote setting dedicated to scientific pursuit. The drawings would inventory visible manifestations of climate change and to seek to explain them through interaction with the station?s scientific community. The routines of daily life would also be recorded, allowing the drawings to present a full picture of human existence in this singular location. By deconstructing and then reassembling the details of travel, research, life forms, and landscape, the project would allow parallels to emerge between scientific study and art-making as paths to understanding. As with the artist?s previous projects, the drawings would be executed in colored pencil on vertically oriented, scroll-like sheets of white paper, uniform in width but varying in length as the subject requires. (Twelve inches wide and up to five feet in length.) In style, they present visual inventories, collections of discreet objects drawn in miniature (about one-inch square) and set row upon row. Each drawing in turn becomes a page in a vast pictographic text that gives viewers insight into what it takes to perform specific tasks or be in particular settings. Photography would also be used to record objects and circumstances so that the more time-consuming process of drawing could be extended beyond the stay in Antarctica and to minimize the artist?s presence when necessary.