Photoperformance at the Patagonian depression “Gran Bajo de San Julián” – February 2009

The deepest depression in both the western and southern hemispheres

“Blessed are those who are at the bottom of the pit, for from there onwards there is only room for improvement”
Joan Manuel Serrat, Bienaventurados, 1987

The photoperformance wants to convey the feeling of “when you are at the very end”. When you have nothing but hope, when all your possessions no longer make sense and when the horizon becomes the only goal to reach. The staging is therefore based on a morphological terrain of depression, both in the emotional, economic and geographical context.
Staging naked in the lowest point in both the southern and western hemispheres, at more than three hundred feet below sea level in total solitude within Patagonic stormy winds, gives us a sense of basic priorities for surviving. The descent to this lagoon of dry mud on its surface, but muddy inside (guadal), is by an almost imperceptible slow and gradual slope. Until sinking into the mud, as in moments of crisis, one wonders: how did I get so far down? How did I not realise in time?
I found out this for me hitherto unknown place during a personal depressive phase. After the financial crisis of 2008, without a concrete goal and more on my own whim, I googled Depression-Argentina on the internet: the first result was the Gran Bajo – the Great Deep – it aroused my curiosity.
The satellite image of this peculiar place with coordinates 49°35’52.0 S 68°19’52.3 W can be found here.