Form and content

Homage

Antarctica Hat Action

The form that visual artist Marty
St James’s work takes is that of a fragmentary or sequential nature resulting via
digital video or digital photographic print technology and more recently
handmade drawings. In 1990 he invented the term Video Portraits, a number of
which are in major collections. Originally a performance artist, touring North
America, Europe and Britain, time based practice features strongly in the
artists use and intentions. The physical practice of movement across time and
space and the notion of journey as found to be the components of a live
performance are essential elements in the artists thinking and understanding of
form. These notions of working with time, translating movement into non-static
forms and vice versa are a logical progression across his use of media, from
live works to single tape videos, video portraits and digital works.

Snow print

Antarctica

Marty St.James 
UK 09

"This will involve the making and recording of a giant complex
non-toxic print image in the snow/ice based on a photographic memory." 

Memories, images, people

We carry with us images
and memories of our past: people, places, things, events, disturbances,
desires, failures and successes.

Current data

Current data informs us
that our environment is changing. The landscape that we are familiar with right
now may not be available for future generations.

A metaphor in time and space

This project proposes
locating the creative process in a place of flux and movement. A visual memory
translated into marks in space and time. As memory is fleeting, as people are
passing this work aims by its construct to be a metaphor in time and space.

The intention

The intention is to stream the process and the making and to
record the result photographically.

This will involve the making and recording of a giant complex
non-toxic print image in the snow/ice based on a photographic memory

The result
will be two fold.

A set of sequential large-scale photographic art works made during its
construction, making and as the piece disappears. To be shown in a gallery
setting after the event.

A streamed live video version via The
Streaming Museum New York – showing to a worldwide audience.

Background in
relation to Antarctica.

My recent video art work [1]Upside
down world is one starting point i.e. thinking of the ways of the world
are upside down and that Antarctica is located in the minds of people as we
view the map as the under part of the world...so which way up is the world? (a
metaphor).

I once travelled across Canada in the winter by train and stopped and at Medicine
Hat. A couple of Australians got off at the station and went mad in the
snow...they were in their 70's and had never seen snow before! (a metaphor) -
disappearing world..

Antarctica is a place that has been split up by the countries of the
world with claims and counter claims. Territories and divides...this work aims
to locate concept and place i.e.: transience of materials (Antarctica) /
transience of ownership / transience of people / therefore transience of
political dogma.

A POLE OF ENERGY Important as a
pole of energy, opposite poles of energies - a complex point of pinnacle
reference, which is a requirement for the whole of existence. It is a measurer
of our doing and yet at the same time they are opposite poles we live between.
Here we are back to my ideas of 2Betweeness-
a state of existence.