All was Ocean! All was Joy! (Or, How the Humans Broke the Ocean’s Heart)

YEAR: 2021
MEDIUM: 32:9 video installation, ceramic shell and sea slug flag, 17:58 mins
FUNDING: Leverhulme Trust

Patchworking together disparate research sources - including field work, biological reports, poetry, children’s books, archeological lectures and cooking - into an aquatic fairytale, this work presents the North Sea as a being in and of herself. A being who, just like you, can have a broken heart. Reflecting on the Dutch storm surge barrier - the Oosterscheldekering - as an intervention that cut the ocean’s body in half, we are demanded to question the implications of artificially separating ocean and freshwater for the marine life that constitute the ocean.

Read my essay, Ebbs and Flows; the Ocean as Collaborator, for more context about the research behind this work in the Moving Image Artists Journal.

Synopsis
Through a dreamt conversation with the ocean, in a world that exists in the mind’s eye, the barrier is revealed as not only a physical but an allegorical divide erected by humanity in order to separate Fact from Fiction. Here, stories live in the salty depths of the ocean and are filtered through The Fact Checker (AKA the Oosterscheldekering) until the hard truths are revealed and solidified as rock deposits in the freshwater. However, reality is called into question when a group of otherworldly sea slugs become entangled with the story of Nehalennia, the ancient Goddess of the North Sea.

Credits
Produced for: MA Artistic Research (KABK) Graduation Show 2021.
Supported by: Leverhulme Trust scholarship.
Sound design: Alex Wight.
Screenings and exhibitions: LUNA Young Masters 2022, Media Art Friesland, Leeuwarden (NL); Matters of Being #6; Other Worlds, iii, The Hague (NL); Video Art & Experimental Film Event, SEA Foundation, Tilburg (NL); Export as embodied imaginations, First Cut, The Hague/Online (NL) ; Undercurrents, Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, Florida (US); Museum Night, Stroom Den Haag (NL).