Bringing back new worlds: A Poetics of Exploratory Space

Abstract

Bringing Back New Worlds: A Poetics of Exploratory Spaces is a practice-led research project conducted via studio research incorporating photography, performance, video and sound installation. The project investigates the ways in which explorers' accounts of their experiences in extreme environments can form foundations for a poetics of exploratory space.

Early twentieth century Antarctic explorers and Apollo era astronauts competed for rare opportunities to travel to places that most humans never encounter. They were charged with undertaking scientific research, functioning as the flag-bearers for colonial and imperial imperatives and performing in post-expedition publicity and marketing spectacles. Within these official structures they undertook their journeys as members of small teams and as individuals, documenting their perceptions, producing still and moving images, letters and diaries. While explorers' personal responses to their experiences have been disseminated as adventurous stories, they can also be understood as a form of phenomenological research which can be mined for insights into the human experience of exploration and survival in remote and extreme environments. My practice-led research has unearthed personal responses and accounts woven within the official narratives and asked the question: what can be discovered about exploratory spaces by interrogating explorers' images and diaries through a phenomenological lens; and can they form the basis of a poetics of exploratory spaces? Antarctica and the Moon have been chosen as the locus for this research as they have rich histories as sites of speculative imagination prior to explorers encountering them directly, and these remote constructions have framed exploratory engagement with Antarctica and the Moon and provide counterpoints to the direct experiences of explorers.

The research tests auto and heterophenomenological methods through photography, performance and installation work to engage with accounts of explorers in order to produce a poetics of exploratory space, presented in the final body of work as a series of video and sound installations. Show more