Nullius_Antarctic Landscape

With the adjudication of a specific cultural work, the rising of an exhibition that should reflect
both the Scientific and Artistic worlds through the specific context of the Antarctic, the elements
were set for the plot to begin. From a mesh of possibilities potentially available some constrains
start to trace the path: How to speak about something that has never been experienced by those
who are to speak? And, How to deal with the legitimate expectations of both sides of the dual
mix science-art?
By claiming an educational philosophy, it will convey its subject through the processes of
art/design thinking, bringing to the foreground the reflection on the Antarctic (landscape) while
concomitantly building a bridge with science developed in the Antarctic by Portuguese. It will be
a construction in progress by all visitors, a sensible and intelligible one.
Seeing that Antarctic is such a peculiar territory, for long an unknown land and still of no one
and at the same time of all (Nullius, the space where emptiness and absence roles); a place where
man is lead to explore his limits and is confronted with his fragility towards the inhospitable
nature, though feeding our imagination by its strangeness and adversity. Being so, it took us to
question to what extent we know that territory, or if we only have an idea of the place, effect of
the stories told by those who have been there, the pictures brought and our own wishes. It is
from this confrontation between man and nature that we find the concept of landscape, territory
elevated to knowledge as an act of culture. So, we asked ourselves what kind of a place is this that
we are building without experiencing. Is it possible to say that the images that we keep in ours
memories in fact belong to a landscape, to the Antarctic landscape? Finally, has the Antarctic a
landscape or a non-landscape as there was not a culture informed by it?
Through the exhibition we propose four actions/concepts that will guide the visitant, asking him
to intervene on the construction and development of the exhibition itself as well as his own
concept of the main subject, the Antarctic landscape. The four actions were translated into
games, each one lead by its concept: the non-measurable; the interminable; disquietude; the
unutterable. In a crescendo of abstraction, starting from the most tangible features of Antarctic
landscape and culminating in the subjective formulation of myths in the process of storytelling.
1st Module: An introduction is made to the Antarctic landscape by showing a panorama from
the real till the imagined. By using different representations, collected among Portuguese
scientists, Paul Rodhouse, school children and disabled people, the visitant becomes aware of

distinct Antarctic landscapes, all coexistent, that enriches and constructs our collective
imagination.
2nd Module: Three games intend to promote the discovery and reflection of the Antarctic
landscape
1st Game: the search of the incommensurable through a shadow game.
Part of the knowledge acquisition process over time happens by imitation, comparison,
experimentation and measurement. However, can we really know the Antarctic landscape
through these processes? Which Antarctic landscape features can we measure and what do they
tell us? In this game, we decided to confront the visitants with scale and distance notions applied
to the Antarctic landscape components: Non-biotic, Biotic and Anthropic.
2nd Game: the interminable and the disquietude on a role-play game.
The perpetual, unavoidable and anguished walk of confrontation with the other and us. We are
permanently unsatisfied, staggering helplessly into the unknown under a continuous and
irreversible process, akin to the myth of Sisyphus. A process that leaves footsteps on us as well as
on landscape. In this game, the visitant is asked to look into various types of human presence in
Antarctica and questioned about the consequences of those actions by embodying four different
moments: The first expeditions on space and time travel to the heroic age of antarctic
exploration; become an Antarctic Portuguese scientist for a day; assume a political role on
Antarctic meetings in the future ahead; and finally as a tourist appealing to a responsible attitude.
3rd Game: the unutterable through a narrative and characters game.
We are built on fears and dreams, all that that despite being thought, idealized and even
represented cannot be named or that we are unable to name. It is no longer a unidirectional
process and so we ask how is this change happening? Who are the intervenients? Is there an
Antarctic imaginarium or culture? To approach these issues we decide to challenge the visitor to
give his contribution to the construction of these imaginaries by creating his own stories and
myths.

3rd Module: visitants interventions along the exhibition itinerancy

The exhibition ends with the unfolding of recorded images of the visitors interactions,
constructions, discoveries and creations during the entire itinerant movement. In this way,
visitants can see what others have done before them, and finally acknowledging the process of
building a landscape.