The first edition of the End of the World Biennial was presented in 2007 in Ushuaia, capital of Argentina’s Tierra del Fuego Province and of the Southern Atlantic Islands. Promoting the southern tourist pole of ‘end of the world city’ with the Ushuaia municipality, a joint initiative was carried out by the Patagonia Arte y Desafío Foundation and the Parlamento Latinoamericano of San Pablo Memorial Foundation. These institutions carried out the task of bringing together, in this small city, around sixty artists from various places in the world.

The first Biennial of the End of the World artistically joined both ends of the Earth in real time, by means of an electronic station located in Ushuaia and others in the North of Canada and Finnish Lapland. In key points of the participating cities, screens were installed for the passers-by to watch and witness the development of the video-artists’ work, to communicate, and also to participate in this multimedia performance.

In its curatorial presentation, the End of the World Biennial appropriated and emphasized its setting as a tourist attraction, taking on the city’s site-specificity with a wide spectrum of productions. Many of them, presented as installations or signposts within the local urban territory, intervened in the landscape or reworked territorial aspects of the Tierra del Fuego setting. At the same time, they attempted to underscore the environmental problems specific to the particularly tenuous position that certain polar regions presently hold in relation to the planet’s overall environment.

Source: bienaldelfindelmundo.org