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The Art Assignment
Art You Can't Get To
Art You Can't Get To
The Art Assignment
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8:10 · Jan 3, 2019
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December
14
1958
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on December 14 1958
0:04
a group of 18 scientists
0:06
and explorers from the Soviet Union arrived
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at the coldest and most remote
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plot of land on earth which is known as the southern
0:13
pole of inaccessibility they
0:15
were travelling in a convoy of tractors
0:17
one of which carried
0:18
a prefabricated 240 square foot Hut and upon arrival the team installed
0:23
the hut and cleared an area for an airplane runway and they also placed
0:27
atop their research building
0:29
a plastic bust of the communist revolutionary
0:32
Vladimir Lenin the bust was faced north so that when and will be looking
0:35
toward Moscow this newly created Soviet
0:38
research station had six months of food and fuel but the expedition only
0:42
lasted 12 days before
0:44
the station was abandoned
0:45
because it became clear that even
0:47
by the extremely cold and
0:49
remote standards of Antarctica
0:51
this place with its average year-round
0:53
temperature of negative 58
0:55
degrees Celsius and its altitude of over 3,800
0:59
meters above sea level was
1:00
simply too inhospitable for
1:02
humans to have an ongoing presence
1:04
there so pole of inaccessibility is
1:06
a geography term referring to the spot farthest
1:09
from a coast in any land mass or body of
1:12
water North America's pole of inaccessibility is
1:15
in the Dakotas on land
1:16
owned by the Ogallala
1:18
Sioux it's more than a thousand
1:19
miles from the nearest ocean South
1:21
America's pole of inaccessibility is
1:24
in a Brazilian rainforest
1:25
Eurasia's is in the Garba Tonga desert near the border between China and
1:29
Kazakhstan the African pole of inaccessibility is
1:32
also very close to an international
1:34
border the tripoint border shared by the Central African Republic South
1:37
Sudan and the Democratic
1:39
Republic of the Congo every
1:40
ocean has such a place as well the Pacific
1:42
Oceans pole of inaccessibility is
1:44
the farthest you can be from land on earth that
1:47
spot is sometimes called point Nemo
1:49
and because it is so far from land unmanned
1:52
spacecraft returning to Earth are often
1:54
aimed at point Nemo as such it's become a kind of satellite graveyard
1:58
the abandoned Space Station near for instance is among hundreds
2:02
of spacecraft whose last and final resting place is near Point Nemo but the
2:06
most famous poem of inaccessibility
2:08
on earth is that one in Antarctica
2:10
it's much harder to reach than the geographic
2:12
South Pole is the southernmost point on earth while
2:15
humans made it to the geographic
2:17
South Pole in 1911
2:18
it took 47 more years
2:21
to reach the pole of inaccessibility in
2:23
those intervening years vladimir
2:25
lenin led the russian revolution and
2:27
became the first leader of the soviet union there
2:29
were two world wars and
2:30
tremendous shifts in mechanization
2:33
the development of nuclear weapons
2:34
and the launch of the first ever satellite
2:37
and even then explorers
2:39
accustomed to Antarctica's climb that lasted
2:41
less than a fortnight
2:42
before abandoning the post another
2:45
group of Soviet explorers made a brief visit in January
2:48
of 1964 later that year a team of Americans
2:51
arrived at the research station and stayed for over a month during
2:55
which time they apparently repositioned
2:57
the bust of Lenin so that it was facing not Moscow
2:59
but Washington DC and then the Soviets visited the station very briefly one more
3:04
time in 1967 at which point they apparently
3:07
turned lenin back toward moscow after that the mostly abandoned
3:10
research station was entirely abandoned
3:13
for 40 years no humans
3:15
made it back to the Antarctic
3:16
pole of inaccessibility and
3:18
in those 40 years most
3:20
of the world's many Lenin busts ended
3:22
up destroyed or removed from
3:24
public view after the Soviet Union collapsed a
3:27
bunch of them ended up underwater
3:28
off the coast of the Crimean Peninsula others
3:31
were melted down or ended up in junkyards
3:34
meanwhile nobody knew what had become of that research station
3:38
blown over probably destroyed
3:40
not by revolution but
3:43
by weather and then in 2007
3:45
an expedition made it back to the pole of inaccessibility and
3:48
as they approached they saw that the research station had
3:51
indeed been almost entirely
3:53
buried by four decades
3:55
of snowfall and shifting
3:57
ice and yet still
3:59
somehow that bust of Lenin being
4:02
at the tallest point of the structure survived
4:05
it had yellowed some but otherwise was in good shape the last time humans
4:10
visited in 2011 the
4:12
bust was still there a single
4:14
human intervention in what one Antarctic
4:17
Explorer called the white darkness
4:19
and that leads me to the point of this whole thing which is that
4:22
I find this remaining linen sculpture to be utter
4:26
beautiful and I'm trying to figure out why like
4:29
God knows I have no desire
4:31
to see it in person the
4:33
artwork itself is not particularly
4:34
masterful or compelling Lenin
4:37
busts were mass-produced and there's nothing extraordinary
4:39
about this one except
4:41
its location and the
4:43
bust was ultimately intended
4:45
as propaganda for a regime that killed
4:47
millions of its own citizens propagandistic
4:50
sculpture is often intended
4:52
to induce reverence or obedience or fear
4:54
but I feel none of that in 2018
4:57
when looking at pictures of the world's most inaccessible
5:00
Lenin bust instead I'm reminded
5:03
how contingent objects are how
5:05
they're always in conversation with
5:07
history and with their viewers how
5:10
they change over time even
5:11
if they don't look different
5:13
because we change that
5:15
lenin bust is about lenin of course but it's also about how it got
5:18
there and why which
5:20
way it's facing and
5:21
the fluctuating landscape of power maybe
5:24
what's beautiful in the end is
5:26
that this is a spot
5:27
so frozen in time of
5:30
course for all we know the lenin bust might already be gone finally
5:33
snowed under or destroyed
5:35
by wind in the past 7 years regardless
5:38
it won't last forever but
5:39
it has survived nearly
5:41
a human lifetime in
5:43
a place where humans themselves cannot
5:45
long survive that we can put art in places
5:48
we cannot put ourselves
5:50
captures both our stunning power and our absolute
5:54
fragility we have our hands all over everything
5:57
in this world we're reshaping the climate
6:00
and the planets biodiversity we
6:02
shoot so many things into space that we've wrapped our planets in satellites
6:06
and yet we are also
6:08
temporary we are small mortal
6:11
beings on a planet
6:12
that contains places we cannot visit very often
6:15
or for very long because
6:18
they are too cold and too
6:19
far removed from other humans
6:21
but even in those places we've left little some things in an attempt to
6:25
say we were here
6:27
we were I don't know if that's good or bad in the end but
6:31
it seems to me very
6:33
human I'm reminded of the negative
6:35
hand stencil cave paintings
6:37
that were independently created
6:38
by many prehistoric people
6:40
around the world our ancestors also painted
6:43
lots of other things all kinds of symbols and
6:46
many different kinds of animals
6:47
including some that are now extinct
6:49
we don't know what those paintings meant to the people who painted them or
6:52
looked at them by firelight as they fell asleep their paintings may have had
6:56
religious import or they could have been part of hunting rituals but
6:59
regardless of what they then they
7:02
mean something different to us now ancient
7:04
cave paintings remind us how long people have been part
7:08
of the story of our planet and
7:09
how deeply ingrained our
7:11
desire is to make
7:13
art the Lennon bust at the bottom of the world isn't as old of
7:16
course but it too is being changed by history
7:19
just as surely as it is being changed by the weather at any rate
7:24
I like imagining that the Lennon bust is still there still
7:28
being changed by many
7:29
different kinds of time and I wonder if there are objects
7:33
be they art or not close or far that
7:35
have changed meaning for you over time or
7:38
that you feel have been changed
7:40
by history let's discuss that in comments thanks
7:43
to all our patrons for
7:45
supporting the art assignment especially in Vincent app' and Indianapolis Holmes
7:48
Realty you can visit patreon.com
7:50
slash art assignment if you'd like to learn more about how you can support our channel
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