In an interview for the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), Colombian artist Daniela Medina Poch said that while there is environmental awareness in Antarctica, there are also national interests. “At times they could contribute to one another, and at times they collide, creating an interesting tension. This tension is worth discussing,“ she added.
Medina Poch is originally from Colombia and has been based in Germany for the past six years. Her work explores different environmental narratives and seeks to challenge the way the relationship between humans and the environment is understood. She focuses on rethinking ecological narratives through the lens of social justice.
This year, she is taking part in the 34th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition as part of the international cooperation programme of the Bulgarian Antarctic Institute.
“We cannot think of the environment without thinking of humans who live in precarious conditions. These things go together. If we want to establish better relationships with other species, it is also important to find out how to be more equitable as a society,” Medina said.
Her Antarctic project is titled We Seek Fire, But We Actually Need Water and addresses the tensions within the Antarctic Treaty. She added that there are two approaches: “an approach focused on taking care of the environment and ecological awareness, and at the same time different nations trying to establish a foothold and ensure they have a say in relation to territorial property.“ “This also relates to the fact that Antarctica, unlike Greenland, has resources underneath. So there are different interests that collide. There is this ecological awareness, and there are national interests. At times they could contribute to one another, and at times they collide, creating an interesting tension. This tension is worth discussing,“ she added.
She explained that her concept centres on the idea that water should not be seen as a resource, but as a source of information. “What is beautiful is that within the word ‘resource’ there is the word ‘source’,” she noted.
Medina added that she chose Antarctica for her current project because it contains 70% of the planet’s freshwater.
“Antarctica also has millenary ice, which is frozen water, meaning water that has stored information for many years. The fact that the planet is warming means this information is being lost. Antarctica fits not only because it is the biggest reservoir of ice on the planet, but also because of all the information contained in the ice,” she said.
According to her, a person who sets foot in Antarctica becomes a conduit for glacial water and the information it holds.
“I believe Antarctica is very much a territory in between. It is not easily accessible. It is not accessible to many life forms; even in terms of bacteria there are not many. [...] Antarctica and the subconscious resonate: it is like a threshold of realities. It has been very important for me to record my dreams and my thoughts. I have been taking multiple notes, doing different diagrams of any idea that comes to mind, and forming free associations,” she said.
Medina combines intuitive and sociological questions with scientific facts in her research. One of her methods involves micro-poetic actions, such as placing a sign reading “What is the mineral world screaming?” at various locations on Livingston Island and a sign that said “imagination” on the beach in front of Bulgaria's St Kliment Ohridski Antarctic base.
“Through micropoetic actions, I connect with the place in another way. I create an extraordinary space, meaning something different from the ordinary: an exception, an in-between situation. This allows me to connect with the environment and with people in a non-conventional way,” she noted. “On one hand, the word 'imagination' contains the word 'nation.' Also, imagination is closely related to when one cannot access something: imagination becomes the tool to access it. Since Antarctica is mostly inaccessible, imagination could be a tool through which people who cannot access it can still show care for the place. The question behind it was: can we take care of a place without having access to it? Can we protect something, or develop affectivity toward something we cannot access, or cannot have a direct relation with? Can imagination be a tool to form other kinds of relations? I believe so,” the artist said.
In her view, Antarctic ice is crucial because it regulates the planet’s temperature, yet beneath it lie resources that may tempt nations due to their great economic value.
“In this sense, Antarctica has an 'apple in paradise': if we take the apple, we lose paradise. There is a demand for these resources, but it can be highly dangerous for our species to access them at the cost of melting the biggest reservoir of ice, which would mean 60 metres more water across the planet,” she said.
Medina’s goal is to bring together her observations and activities from the Antarctic project into video and photographic works, as well as artistic installations, for an exhibition to be presented in Germany, Portugal, and possibly Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian naval research vessel Sv. Sv. Kiril i Metodii (RSV 421) departed for Antarctica from Varna (on the Black Sea) on November 7, 2025. After a month-long voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, the ship arrived at the Argentine naval base in Mar del Plata on December 13.
BTA has had a national press club on board the ship since 2022 and another on Livingston Island since February 2024. BTA Director General Kiril Valchev said they exist thanks to the generous support of RSV 421 and Bulgaria’s St Kliment Ohridski Base, which provide the necessary facilities. These two press clubs are added to the news agency’s other 41 national press clubs (33 in Bulgaria, seven abroad in neighbouring countries and in nations with large Bulgarian communities, and one mobile National Book Press Club).
The news items of BTA's special correspondents on RSV 421 and Antarctica are freely available in Bulgarian and English on the agency's website. They can be used free of charge by all media, with attribution to BTA.
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