My talk will provide a working visual background of the three completed parts of my long proposed 'Atlas of Emptiness and Extremity'. The central purpose of this work has been to visually establish the 'World's Edge', from the geographical extremities of all five Continents surrounding the Atlantic Basin. To this end, the three parts that currently make up this enormous work in progress are,so far, point of no return, Ojo de Agua - Eye of the Water and TRUE.
Part One, 'point of no return' presents works from the extremities of furthest north, furthest west, and furthest south of the continents of Europe and Africa - the Old and the Classical Worlds. The proposition here being that western culture, as I understand it, began in these areas and migrated 'west' to the New Worlds of South and North America, transposing itself into something that I believe to be new, or at least different from it's cultural points of origination.
I attempt to trace this cultural migration and it's consequential effects in Parts Two and Three of the long term Atlas project. Part Two, 'Ojo de Agua - Eye of the Water', details works from the Atlantic extremities of North-most, East-most and South-most South America. Then finally Part Three, 'TRUE', reviews the extremities of the Polar Regions from and between the North and South Poles.
I began work on this project in 1990. I have been working on it continuously for nearly 20 years now. I hope to finish with what I lightheartedly describe as 'work from the complete Atlantic coastal extremities' of central and North America - from the Panama-Columbia border up to Ellesmere Island at the northern top of northern North America. If I should be fortunate enough to actually succeed in completing this final segment of the Atlas, I will have completely circumnavigated the physical and terrestrial extremities of the entire Atlantic Basin in hopes of registering some response through the pictures that I will have made in these far away places that propose to reflect, or at least consider the state of human condition.