Welcome on board

Antarctica is the last frontier that must be reached at all costs before it disappears. The tourism in Antarctica crystallize what is at stake in the relationship between human beings and the planet : how we have turned the natural world into a commodity.

For four years, I was a seafaring hotel crew on luxury cruises. Uniform, badge, appropriate smile, sheathed attitude, chignon and heels at the Captain’s party: I was part of the well-oiled ballet of crew members. With the others, I played out this theatrical life for the tourist industry. I experienced it up close and personal, fascinated to the point of nausea.

Welcome on board is an ambivalent, two-headed play, somewhere between the absurd and the sublime. At first, on stage: Antarctica, the ultimate cruise destination. Isolated for millions of years, the vast frozen continent, remote and impenetrable, was one of the planet’s last sanctuaries. This territory, once known only to explorers and scientists, has become a commodity, a destination of choice for wealthy tourists, thirsty for novelty and eager to discover regions threatened with extinction. Then, in a second time, behind the scene: the staging becomes plasterboard, with its costumes, codes and gestures. All the beauty and tragedy of our world, savored between two glasses of champagne...