Mal de Mer

video, 40 min­utes
2017

Over the course of one year, the artist threw a gopro cam­era under the Stur­dies Bay dock on Galiano Island, British Colum­bia, Cana­da. The cam­era cap­tures a shift­ing under­wa­ter Sal­ish seascape — life forms chang­ing in sym­bio­sis with the sea­son­al weath­er, cur­rents, and fluc­tu­a­tions in life-cycle of marine organ­isms. Enhanced by the accom­pa­ny­ing sound­scape (com­posed by Gra­ham Meis­ner), the camera’s point of view takes on some­thing akin to a crea­ture swim­ming through this habi­tat, even though the per­spec­tive is entire­ly mechan­i­cal (that of the under­wa­ter cam­era). The ini­tial impe­tus of the work was a med­i­ta­tion on the fragili­ty of the world’s oceans in light of anthro­pogenic change. With­out ref­er­ences to how this area looked in the past, the waters appear mar­velous­ly abun­dant in life, although humans’ pres­ence is heavy. The orig­i­nal sound­scape was dom­i­nat­ed by the sound of fer­ries com­ing and going, cre­at­ing much under­wa­ter tur­bu­lence and noise. What is cap­tured on video is sea life hav­ing adapt­ed to human indus­try — a kind of eco-roman­tic ruin.

Soundscape composed by Graham Meisner.