One of the standout works of this past Saturday’s late night art festival Nocturne 2014, Agathe Simon’s Nova Antarctica at the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative presented the tragic story of the legendary Gabriela Conti. An acclaimed author, Conti was the first Argentine woman to reach the South Pole. 
Agathe Simon, Antarctic Music
Submerging the viewer into Conti’s story, a multi-channel audio installation titled Antarctic Music sets the context. A dense roaring field of sound surrounds and fills the room: rumbling engines, radio chatter, birds, and a score of voices reading and performing Conti’s travelogue in various languages. The story of her expedition is revealed through her fragmented diary entries that have been scattered throughout the space out of chronological order.
The viewer wanders through the narrative as Conti begins to feel the weight of the landscape that surrounds her, the weight on her body, the weight on her mind. In her journal, she begins to question the meaning of the expedition. She feels compelled to leave the group, to wander off to certain death. When she reaches the South Pole, she writes that she is too tired to feel anything. The audio is both chaotic and hypnotic, lost in the snow. However, while it was well executed and created an appropriate sonic landscape for the story, the exhibition space itself did not seem integral. The presentation of the journal entries (printer paper stuck to the brick walls) felt rushed and the lighting didn’t add anything to the experience.
Down the hall was Antarctic Spectrum, a video installation based on Conti’s final journal entry: “Flames of colours raise above ice and burn my manuscripts: the ash mingles with snow…” The video is a searing collage of colour fields drawn from a spectrum analysis of audio Simon recorded in Antarctica, along with quick clips of ice, sea elephants, and wind. Despite some rough edges, the overall work left a heavy impression. With its strongly emotional content, Simon’s carefully crafted non-linear fiction is compelling and engaging.
Agathe Simon is presenting an artist talk at the Atlantic Filmmakers’ Cooperative tonight at 7pm.
Nocturne 2014: http://nocturnehalifax.ca/
Daniel Higham works in a butcher shop where he’ll talk to you about art, food, and life. Daniel writes for Visual Arts News and is Akimblog’s Halifax correspondent. He can be followed on Twitter @highamdaniel.
↧
Agathe Simon at Nocturne
↧