Antarctica is the antithesis of urbanity – a blank space at the tail end of the world, and nobody’s country. Through images and readings from her forthcoming memoir and polar travel narrative Ice Diaries, Jean McNeil charts the streetless continent’s mysterious flows of ice, subterranean frozen lakes, and constantly changing topography. Artist Lara Almarcegui examines processes of urban transformation brought on by political, social, and economic change. Since the mid-1990s, she has studied urban features that are not usually the focus of attention: wastelands, construction materials, invisible elements. The session is chaired by artist and photographer Diego Ferrari.
Biographies
Lara Almarcegui
Lara Almarcegui is a Spanish contemporary artist based in Rotterdam, her work highlights neglected or undefined spaces within urban environments, which she researches, preserves, and documents through photos, text, guides and publications. She was commissioned for the Radical Nature exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, and produced a Guide to the Wastelands of the Lea Valley – 12 Empty Spaces Await the London Olympics.
Diego Ferrari
Diego Ferrari is an artist and photographer, living and working in London. His recent work takes a fine art approach to street photography. His work interrogates the relationship between social values and public spaces, with a particular interest in the relationship between the body and its environment, urbanism and architecture. He also teaches 'Photography, Art and Architecture' at Central Saint Martins College of Art and is currently a lecturer on the BA in photography at Kingston University, London.
Jean McNeil
Jean McNeil is a novelist and literary writer whose residency in Antarctica with Arts Council England and the British Antarctic Survey inspired four literary works, including the forthcoming Ice Diaries: a climate change memoir (2016). She is also Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia.