'I am your past' / 'yo soy tu pasado'
is:
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a collaborative art and literature project mediated by science.
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a dialogue between Amazonia and the Antarctic through letters, poetry and sound, to raise awareness of the teleconnections and the threats posed to these two ecosystems, and the planet, by climate change*.
October 20th
Dear Mr. Antarctic Glacier,
Please forgive my intrusion into your white existence with my tropical enthusiasm. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Nieve. I am the fresh snow of the high Andes in Colombia. The balcony of my house overlooks wrinkled mountains that wrap themselves in green as they descend into the Amazonian thicket in the distance. Condors say those páramos and forests are home to wonderful creatures and plants, which unfortunately, remain unknown to me.
I write to you because I think we have something in common. You there, with your ice feet on the water, and me here, with my head kissing the clouds at 5,364 meters above sea level. Lately I’ve been noticing strange changes around me, and in myself… I feel light, as if I were being disrobed and can’t quite cover the summit of my volcano. I am worried. Does this happen to you?
Again, I beg your pardon, and my best regards to you.
Nieve, snow of the Huila volcano, in Colombia
My address is: 02°55′48″N 76°01′48″W
PS: The other day a scientist sat next to me and told me something strange: that 90 million years ago, you, your entire Antarctic neighborhood used to be a forest similar to the one I have at my feet. With ferns and huge trees, and dinosaurs and everything. I have never heard such madness. "You are Antarctica’s past," the guy said to me. I wonder if he was oxygen starved.
Servicio Geológico Colombiano
The reply goes out by sea, a speedy ten knots via the Humboldt Current, before taking flight on a southeasterly trade wind.
Jeff Goodell
November 18th
Dear Nieve of the high Colombian Andes,
I must say I was both surprised and happy to receive your letter. Surprised because I thought no one in the tropical mountains had any knowledge of my existence. The life of an Antarctic glacier is a solitary one. Although increasingly I feel the presence of planes, vessels, tractors and people milling around…
You mention you are worried about strange changes you notice in yourself. I too find myself feeling odd. My feet are warm, my muscles are cracked inside, I can sense water rushing under my abdomen, and I am shedding skin to the sea more quickly. For a few years now, researchers have been dragging radars and echosounders all over my body, sending submersibles to inspect my underbelly and opening holes on my back with hot water drills. Suddenly I feel like the most important patient in the room…
As far as me (meaning the Antarctic continent) having been “a forest,” it sounds fascinating. That, however, does not explain this “I am your past” business. We are separated by a whole ocean you and I, and for heaven’s sake, you’re on top of an Andean mountain! Sounds like your chap was indeed hypoxic.
Please write back and tell me about your world, with all your “tropical enthusiasm.” And the view from over five-thousand meters must be stunning!
Sincerely,
Thwaites Glacier
Proudly “The widest glacier on Earth”
Here is my address: 75°6′S 105°31′W
Explore the audio versions of the letters, poems and sound art being created by the artists of the collaboration
Letters and science research:
Angela Posada-Swafford
Poems and reseach:
Elizabeth Lewis-Williams
Transformations,
a sound art piece
by Diana Maria Restrepo
Extract from poem
The last forests of Antarctica
Jaguar leaps,
winding time
backwards from the opened book
to a leaf falling through dappled light.
Nothofagus, Southern Beech.
On the shelves, petrified vertebrae
grow back into tree, ferns
unfurl, become green.
Remains of the southern beech Nothofagus (N. beardmorensis) have been found only 400 km from the South Pole. / BAS
Millenary art rock in Colombia's Cerro Azul, Guaviare / A. Posada
Amazonia view from Colombia's Cerro Azul, Guaviare /
A. Posada
* 'I am your past' is planned as a future online expanded book and exhibition space, with sound art, a short film, articles about the science behind both ecosystems, and recordings of interviews, as well as the text of letters and poems.
Antarctica was covered, around 90 to 100 million years ago, in lush temperate forests. The speed of warming on the Antarctic Peninsula makes conceivable a future where the continent is forested once again. Indeed, Antarctica is beginning to turn green, as its edges are insidiously colonized by vegetation. At the same time, the Amazon is losing both rainfall and resiliency. The relentless pace of change in both ecosystems has profound implications for biodiversity, carbon storage, and transformation on a global scale.
Through the correspondence between these two landscapes, Amazonia and Antarctica will teach one another about the realities of their changing environments. And teach us all in the process. Climate change is a global emergency, and also the epic narrative of our age. By giving voice to the human and non-human, the project is looking to develop a new narrative, rooted in the belief in the need to harness the imagination and the capacity for hope, to bring about change.
