Mariele Neudecker

Some Things Happen All At Once is a newly developed tank-piece for the Antarctic Pavilion in this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, and, for me, it is the first cuboid tank-work since 2008. A scale-model of ‘Halley VI Antarctic Research Station’ (3D computer generated) is submerged in a cloudy, re-created Antarctic landscape. The research station is situated at the bottom of a water-filled tank, embedded into a downscaled and cropped manifestation of a geophysical ice shelf. To work with ‘sculptural imagery’ of contemporary architecture in an extreme natural environment demands a recalibration of our perception. I am interested in the sublime undertones of this otherwise scientific and architectural scenario, enabled and hindered by technology, encouraging an unfolding of layered readings. With this piece I am shifting my source material from ‘imaginary worlds’ to one that is very remote, but physically real. We are confronted with something that is subtly responsive to an incremental and continuously changing landscape.

I have visited the very Northern Regions of Arctic Greenland for the whole month of May in 2012. This Arctic expedition enabled me to spend time with subsistence hunters traveling by dogsled on the sea-ice.

Before I went exchanged a few emails with a scientist on a marine expedition on board the British Research Vessel – RRS James Cook, in the South West Indian Ocean. Professor Alex Roger’s team spent two months close to Antarctica, not only in one of the remotest places on any map but also researching one of the least explored, and deepest regions of the ocean, generating data to map a vast, unknown, underwater mountain range. Later, I was able to use some of their ROV footage that was shot thousands of meters below for several video installations.

Certainly the Brunt Ice Shelf is one of these places, off the grid, where technologies have to adapt and humans have to find ways to stay resilient in a continuously changing place. With this tank work I aim to contextualize Halley VI in terms of its physical situation and remote location.