Visitors to Antarctica Come by Choice or Need, Says Salvadoran Filmmaker Ernesto Bautista

People who come to Antarctica are not there by chance, they either choose or feel a need to be there, Salvadoran filmmaker and visual artist Ernesto Bautista told BTA in an interview on Friday. Bautista is member of the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition.

Ernesto Bautista is a film director, visual artist, and writer from El Salvador. A political emigre, he currently lives and works between Bolivia and Colombia. He joined the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition through cooperation between the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute and the Colombian Polar Program. Most of his work explores collective memory and migration, combining political and poetic approaches.

“Collaboration with Bulgaria is part of a cooperative system. Everyone helps everyone. It’s like a happy neighborhood: people help each other. The economy of this place is based on diplomatic relations, which is very particular,” he explained about his interest in participating in a foreign Antarctic expedition.

On Antarctica, Bautista is working on three projects, grouped under the title “The Only Memory of the World Will Always Be Silence.”

The first project is dedicated to the symbolism of animals in Antarctica and is called “Animals Made of Pure Memory.” “This is an exploration of dreams, memories, and trauma, focused on releasing memories that somehow keep pulling you back into the past and transforming them into animals to be released,” he explained. “So this is a combination of cryptozoological speculative thinking with poetic and psychiatric, neurological research. It’s not only about recalling these images, but understanding why this form, or this dynamic of release as a living memory, needs to be created,” Bautista added. He emphasized that this is an intimate project, still in the process of defining its final format.

The second project shares the main project’s title, “The Only Memory of the World Will Always Be Silence.” “We are talking about presence and absence. For this project, I work with a GoPro camera and a thermal camera. To me, these are intimate devices and were deliberately chosen. The first, because this type of camera, at least the one I use, is almost voyeuristic, acting as a witness. There are many places where a large camera cannot be brought. But the advantage of a small camera is that it can witness processes that a large one cannot,” he explained. Bautista stressed that he wants the project to be personal and to capture his perspective as a participant in the Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition.

“The thermal camera is key to the project. Presence and absence, at least from my point of view, are measured through temperature. Something as simple as a nuance or the warmth of a body can be perceived as company,” he said.

According to Bautista, in a place like Antarctica, where everything is cold and determined by the cold, even the primordial “soup of life” has been measured through temperature. “It’s beautiful, because in the colors I configured for the images, the coldest is black, completely black, so what is cold appears like a void. Warmth is white or yellow. So you can see this kind of compression when viewing the images,” he explained. Bautista emphasized that he focuses on this perspective of Antarctica because its history so far has been defined by human presence - whether political, human, or existential: solitude, companionship, spiritual experiences that are based on warmth.

The third project by the Salvadoran filmmaker in Antarctica deals with the history of human presence and politics on the continent, as well as the creation of a Salvadoran Antarctic base. “At present, this is not possible at all, because we are not a consultative or non-consultative member. You cannot even say that they consider scientific expeditions or similar - this is not on the agenda at all,” Bautista noted.

Through a fictional conversation about a potential Salvadoran Antarctic program, the artist seeks to explore the possibilities for its real creation in the future and the political aspects involved.

“Here, for example, there is the story of Christo Pimpirev, who accomplished all these things to establish the base. I’ve seen that other bases have their own specific histories of how they began. For me, it’s very interesting, because being present in Antarctica is not just the bare intention to save the world or nature, it’s more complex. To suggest the presence of a country like mine here, in my view, is to raise questions about all these lines, all these narratives surrounding the creation of bases. I am almost certain that in the future, after 2048, this period will be known as the ‘era of bases’ or something similar, because now everything is a base. The goal is to have a base,” Bautista said.