Imagination allows us to access something that may be at a distance, in another space, or that does not occur in the present but exists in another temporality. It can also allow us to perceive what lies beyond the range of human senses. Imagination enables us to establish a relationship with what remains inaccessible.

It also allows us to question certainties, what we consider stable, and established canons. It shows that what we believe to be indispensable may not be so, because imagination allows us to come into contact with the non-human and the invisible. For this reason, imagination also makes empathy possible: imagining how another being feels and, through this, making compassion possible.

It is also a way of recognising different forms of agency and of acknowledging what does not yet exist: giving a name to what is not visible, what is hidden, or absent. In this sense, imagination becomes a way of attuning ourselves to a form of human and more-than-human listening, of listening to the planet. It opens up the possibility of hearing the subtle voices of the planet.

The site-specific installation One by One, the Rocks Melted speaks of imagination as a tool for relating to that which remains inaccessible.Within this context, the installation proposes a material friction. Ice forms imagi and stones form nation, both elements sourced from the immediate environment. As the ice melts, the stones are removed one by one. The nation disappears. Imagination emerges as a relational and possibly anti-extractivist tool.

Drone documentation: Oleg Vassilev
Video documentation: Ernesto Bautista
Video editing: Juan Pablo García Sossa and Daniela Medina Poch

Special thanks to the staff of St. Kliment Ohridski Base, to Ernesto, the iceberg, the ocean, and the rocks.Produced within the framework of the Colombian Antarctic Art Project, the 12th Colombian Expedition to Antarctica, and the Colombian Antarctic Program, in collaboration with the 38th Bulgarian Antarctic Expedition.