Talking Antarctica
Musicians and entertainers travelled to the ice continent for a very special 60th birthday party.
We all have an inkling we should care about one of the remotest locations on earth – Antarctica – but few of us know much about it; not only because most of us can’t go there, but much of the world-leading science from the ice has seemed inaccessible.
Until now. This year the TEDx talk phenomena has taken to the ice to bring the area, the science and the environmental protection being carried from Scott Base to the masses via its popular broadcasts.
New Zealand celebrates 60 years of delivering science from Scott Base this year, and Antarctica New Zealand wanted to avoid a cake cutting-style celebration at all costs.
Instead they have found a way to make Antarctica mainstream and entertaining, by having the likes of veteran Hollywood reporter turned adventurer and environmental advocate Ashlan Cousteau and Kiwi singer-songwriter Gin Wigmore, alongside top Antarctic scientists like Craig Cary and Gary Wilson, kickstart a conversation on Antarctica.
The act of coordinating a TEDx talk from Antarctica isn’t easy, to start with the bandwidth to broadcast the talks live – as is typical with the talks internationally – wasn’t large enough.
Instead, they decided to film the TEDx talks on January 15 and promptly fly the tapes back to Christchurch to be edited and then broadcast a week later – today.
About 80 lucky people came to Scott Base to see the talks live, including the American neighbours from nearby McMurdo Station. But the room is so small, only 50 people were able to fit into it at a time, so they take turns.
They’re excited – it’s not very often something like this is pulled off from the base that’s usually reserved for science of the highest end – not entertainment for the masses.
The show kicks off with hesitant applause.
‘‘Guys, we’re in Antarctica – we’re not going to wake the neighbours: let’s try that one more time: ‘Welcome to TEDx Scott Base,’’’ shouts chief executive of Antarctica New Zealand Peter Beggs from the stage.
This time there’s a bit more of a roar as the lucky few erupt into claps and whoops for the talks as part of the 60th birthday celebration.
‘‘Here our science is slowly unlocking the secrets and answering piece-by-piece what we think our future planet is going to look like – a planet our children will inherit, a planet that we’re the guardians of,’’ he introduces before the speakers take to the stage.
Many of the speakers have a keen connection with Antarctica.
The Cousteau name has significant ties to the ice. In 1972 Jacques Cousteau, the French naval officer turned explorer, conservationist, scientist, filmmaker, author and photographer led an expedition to Antarctica. They were among the first to bring Antarctica to television,
filming four episodes on their expedition, allowing some viewers to lay eyes on the ‘‘white continent’’ for the first time.
A bit like an early reality series, the story was told well, but the message was strong.
When Cousteau left, he said: ‘‘Antarctica was the last continent discovered by man, we can not let her be the first destroyed by us,’’
A generation later, his grandson’s wife Ashlin Cousteau bounces onto the makeshift stage in the loading dock of the recently renovated Hillary Field Centre, on Scott Base.
While she acknowledges entertainment has a dark side, she’s passionately focused on using entertainment as a tool for positive change.
‘‘We’ve seen entertainment used to elect officials – you know who I’m talking about – we’ve seen entertainment used to spread the doctrine of hate and also we’ve seen the rise of fake news, we know that entertainment is incredibly strong and we must use that power for good.
She’s a long way from where her career was before 2010, before she met and married Philippe Cousteau.
For over a decade she was one of the faces for E News and Entertainment Tonight.
‘‘I cared about the environment, but it wasn’t a huge part of my life – I recycled. But as I was drawn deeper and deeper into conservation I started to become really embarrassed by my entertainment career.
‘‘It was like I was leading this double life – I would interview Prince in the morning about his new song and then I would go to have dinner with Prince Albert of Monaco to talk about saving our oceans.
‘‘I couldn’t figure out how the two parts of my life would come together.’’
She chose the path of least resistance – deciding to marry the two.
Today she is focused on telling stories about the environment engagingly, through her Discovery series Nuclear Sharks and the the collaborative series with her husband and Wes Anderson Aquatic World.
Similarly, Kiwi songstress Gin Wigmore’s inroad to Antarctica is through music.
At first she didn’t quite get the fit – or quite know why she’d been asked, nor how she could enter into it with her songs.
‘‘I was having a really hard time with Antarctica – you’re so big and awesome, you’re a badass continent,’’ she says to the room, many of them scientists.
‘‘You stay up really bloody late; you’re up 24 hours for months – I could never ever do that and then you go into darkness and sleep for a long time and then you’re unpredictable and cold.’’
‘‘I was like, I am going to humanise you – I humanised it and now I can kind of forge this human relationship
Guys, we’re in Antarctica – we’re not going to wake the neighbours: let’s try that one more time: ‘Welcome to TEDx Scott Base.’
with it and in turn write about it.’’
‘‘My message to fans and the wider TEDx audience is to try and have a relationship with Antarctica – maybe that’s just making it into a person, a friend, a family member that’s problematic.’’
Microbial biologist Craig Cary has previously spoken about his work on bacteria in the Dry Valleys and his TEDx talk amps that to a new audience.
Bacteria are the most amazing organism on the planet, says the diffident Californian now at the University of Waikato. They’ve survived climate change and extinction over 4 billion years and occupy almost every ecological niche on the planet.
The bacteria of the Dry Valleys of Antarctica are especially important because the ecological system is relatively simple and scientists can better unpick what’s going on, he says.
New Zealand photographer Jane Ussher is the first speaker. She is softly spoken and slender and talks about the painstaking process of photographically documenting the historic huts of Antarctic explorers Captain Robert Falcon Scott and Sir Ernest Shackleton.
In 2008 when she first stepped onto the ice, she was struck by the glare of the snow and the vastness of the landscape.
Light is everything to a photographer, and her challenge was adjusting to some of the harshest light conditions on the planet.
The interior of the huts were either dark and oppressive, or lit by brilliant stripes of window light.
Her preferred techniques were using long exposures, multiple frames per image and a lot of macro work became difficult.
‘‘I felt completely overwhelmed by the enormity of the task.
‘‘The end goal was to photograph the huts in far more detail than the human eye could see.’’
She had to painstakingly light each part of the hut separately by bouncing in available light into each area.
The outcome is a haunting, eerie and emotive photos that have been stitched together to make a whole.
Almost 1000 volunteer hours went into making the event on ice happen.
Jeanine Foster from Antarctic New Zealand was one of the organisers of TEDxScottBase.
‘‘We had to innovate to reduce cargo and minimise the environmental impact of the operation – while at the same time showcasing the calibre of New Zealand-led science and worldclass logistics.
‘‘No one in the team complained when we had to keep going back to the drawing board.
‘‘It all added real value to pulling off such a significant event in one of the most challenging locations on earth,’’ she says.
On Sunday there will be more than 65 viewing parties held across 16 continents as the broadcasts go live.
Other TEDx speakers included Jeremy Moon, founder of the merino clothing company Icebreaker, former NASA astronaut Dan Barry, Antarctic filmmaker Anthony Powell, and University of Otago geophysicist Christina Hulbe.
Chief executive of Antarctica New Zealand Peter Beggs
TEDxScottBase ‘‘viewing parties’’ will be held today in Auckland, Waiheke Island, Hamilton, Upper Hutt, Wellington, Greymouth, Christchurch, Queenstown and Dunedin. The programme can also be watched at tedxscottbase.com