01 TBA21–ACADEMY: THE AQUATIC OBSERVATORY
For this series, we begin by looking at a group of short films commissioned by the TBA21–Academy and made available as ‘Sense to Act: The Aquatic Observatory’ as part of the ‘Critical Zones’ exhibition[i], and also at the ZKM, Karlsruhe[ii].
The Ocean remains comparatively little-explored, even as compared with space; some 500 people have left the planet, but only a handful have reached its deepest seabed (Ballard and Hively, 2000). The films gathered under the title ‘Sense to Act: The Aquatic Observatory,’ provide varied angles of insight into this near unknown marine environment. In the words of María Montero Sierra, co-curator of the programme, ‘the artworks on view all employ different forms of storytelling that motivate action and explore the continuous transformations that surround and unsettle humankind.’
These transformations are set out most empirically in What is Deep Sea Mining? (2018–ongoing), three short documentaries[iii] and a filmed glossary by Inhabitants (Mariana Silva and Pedro Neves Marques’s online channel for exploratory video and documentary reporting) in collaboration with Portuguese curator Margarida Mendes. In these four videos, they call on marine experts to explain the otherness and future potential commercial uses of the ocean depths.
The first episode, ‘Tools for Ocean Literacy,’ previews what is to come in clipped pieces of film, suspended in a 3D model. These ‘plates’ of satellite and seabed footage emphasise the cumulative and layered nature of marine research, and the seabed’s own layers. We are told that the advent of increasingly sophisticated forms of measurement have upended our assumptions about the deep oceans.
Mapping techniques such as sonar imaging (Deacon et al., 2001; Chen et al., 2018) have made it clear that the sea floor is not the uniform plane Victorian cartographers had assumed, but rather a complex topography of mountains, trenches, and volcanic landforms (ibid). Studies into ecology have shown that these environments, which would be considered hostile by terrestrial standards, being characterised by intense pressure and low levels of light, may actually have levels of biodiversity rivaling those of tropical rainforests (Grassle and Maciolek, 1992; van Dover, 2000; Jobstvogt et al., 2014). These recently charted sites are introduced as the new frontiers of resource extraction.
One of these new frontiers is the Azores archipelago, which is the focus of episode three. A unique environment, the archipelago sits on the North Atlantic Ridge – a divergent plate boundary where two of the Earth’s tectonic plates move slowly apart (van Dover, 1995), and where hydrothermal vents support complex, and often endemic, ecosystems (Wheeler et al., 2013; Gonnella et al., 2016; Cerqueira, et al., 2017; Portail et al., 2018). ‘This is our alien planet,’ the film asserts, and the lifeforms which exist in these environments are, indeed, unfamiliar. Hydrothermal vents, only discovered in 1977 (Lonsdale, 1977), are unique environments in which life forms are able to oxidise sulphides to produce organic matter; they use chemosynthesis, not photosynthesis, and may be connected to the origins of life. Here, these points are explored in a direct ‘talking heads’, straight-to-camera style.
Where ‘What is Deep Sea Mining?’ shows the scientific context for and potential consequences of the extraction of ocean resources, Ingo Niermann’s 20 minute movie Sea Lovers (2020) explores how we relate to the bodies of water which, after all, make up most of the world[iv]. It proposes that people should become more intimate with the ocean, and hopes that might enable us ‘to work towards a sea of love where all creatures help and celebrate each other’. Niermann points out that to some extent the sea is already used like the countryside - for fishing, cultivation and energy production, and by cruise ships and ‘undersea hiking’ providing a form of tourism. But, according to this film, it’s not feasible to claim ownership of its water, which generates a welcome inclusivity.
What we see is mostly people swimming, floating and linking up underwater[v] while a mixture of sung and spoken words explain what it is to be the ‘sea lovers’ they are training to become. It should be easy to respond, for ‘nobody hugs more evenly, more expansively, more patiently than the sea’. And there’s a suggestion of going beyond ourselves, perhaps even beyond the normal constraints of time, neatly inscribed in the pun: ‘When we jump into the water, it encloses us in no time’. The voice-overs seem to ascribe agency to the ocean, and emphasise that ‘the sea created us – we can enter the sea and celebrate our origins in amphibious devotion.’ We can also express our devotion to other people, caressing them indirectly by moving the water. The combination of footage and message is idealistic and charming.
Yet ‘Sea Lovers’ has its dark side too. Complications arise when we are asked to consider how we might interact with the creatures of the sea. ‘What could make a sea pet?’ is an uncomfortable question. We are told that dolphins prove too attached to their own kind. Octopuses are put forward as strikingly competent yet utterly other pets ‘unique to the touch’, but the speculation soon moves beyond them taking a subservient role: ‘how wise octopuses could become if they didn’t die too young’ – at some point, perhaps, they will evolve to live longer, learn more, and then ‘if they could leave the water with their shapeshifting and multi-tasking skills, they could replace us.’ The true Sea Lover, presumably, would be content in the role of an octopus’s pet.
What emerges, then, from ‘Sea Lovers’ is a picture of the attitudes we might need in place if the agenda implied by ‘What is Deep Sea Mining?’ is to be followed through in the right way. The third film project reminds us that the approach may be refreshing, but is only new from a western, post-industrial perspective. The Maori myths referenced in Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa (2019) chime very much with the Fijians’ ancestral understanding that ‘I am the Ocean. The Ocean is on me’. The film[vi], created by Khadija von Zinnenburg Carroll in collaboration with the Rangiwaho community in Aotearoa/New Zealand, is narrated in a mixture of Maori and English by Jody Toroa. The starting point is an 18 metre whale washed up at ‘the foot of our sacred mountain’ – the first such for six generations – and that event dominates the look of the film: all we see is the near-abstraction of a close-up pan across the carcass. We learn that this whale, which the Rangiwaho name ‘Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa’[vii] died from the effects of pollution. Moreover, the soft bones can be used to fertilise Kauri trees that are dying, so there’s a sense in which the whale lives on in the now-healthier trees, as well as in the retelling of the tale and in carvings on the tribal meeting house.
Taken as a whole, then, ‘Sense to Act: The Aquatic Observatory’ amounts to a tool kit of information and approaches to bear in mind in deciding how we should deal with the further development of the oceans, which technology will surely make increasingly feasible.
[i] Films available online at www.ocean-archive.org
[ii] ‘Critical Zones’ at ZKM | Centre for Art and Media Karlsruhe, on view to 8 Aug, 2021
[iii] Episode 1: “Tools for Ocean Literacy”, 6:46 min.
Episode 2: “Deep Frontiers”, 6:47 min.
Episode 3: “The Azores Case”, 8:23 min.
Episode 4: “A Deep Sea Mining Glossary”, 5:37 min.
Episode 5 is in preparation
[iv] The script is largely based on Niermann’s book ‘Mare Amoris’ in the Sternberg press Solutions series
[v] These footages are from a voyage to the Solomon Islands in Spring 2019, led by Chus Martínez as part of her ‘The Current II’ cycle
[vi] ‘Te Haa Kui o Tangaroa’ (5.19min.) now constitutes the first part of the 30 minute work ‘Te Moana - The Ocean’ (2019-20)
[vii] Literally ‘The Breath of Tangaroa’, Tangaroa being the Maori spirit of fish and the sea
References
Ballard, R.D. & Hively, W., (2000). The Eternal Darkness: a personal history of deep-sea exploration, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cerqueira, T., Pinho, D., Froufe, H., Santos, R.S., Bettencourt, R. & Egas, C., (2017). Sediment microbial diversity of three deep-sea hydrothermal vents southwest of the Azores. Microbial ecology, 74(2), pp.332-349.
Chen, W., Gu, K., Min, X., Yuan, F., Cheng, E., & Zhang, W. (2018). Partial-Reference Sonar Image Quality Assessment for Underwater Transmission. IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 54(6), 2776-2787.
Deacon, M., Rice, A.L. & Summerhayes, C.P., (2001). Understanding the oceans: a century of ocean exploration, London: UCL Press.
Gonnella, G., Böhnke, S., Indenbirken, D., Garbe-Schönberg, D., Seifert, R., Mertens, C., Kurtz, S. & Perner, M., (2016). Endemic hydrothermal vent species identified in the open ocean seed bank. Nature microbiology, 1(8), pp.1-7.
Grassle, J.F.,& Maciolek, N.J., (1992). Deep-sea species richness: regional and local diversity estimates from quantitative bottom samples. Am. Nat. 139 (2), 313–341.
Hannigan, J., 2016. The geopolitics of deep oceans. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.
Jobstvogt, N., Hanley, N., Hynes, S., Kenter, J. & Witte, U., (2014). Twenty thousand sterling under the sea: estimating the value of protecting deep-sea biodiversity. Ecological Economics, 97, pp.10-19.
Little, C.T. & Vrijenhoek, R.C., (2003). Are hydrothermal vent animals living fossils?. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 18(11), pp.582-588.
Lonsdale, P., (1977). Clustering of suspension-feeding macrobenthos near abyssal hydrothermal vents at oceanic spreading centers. Deep Sea Research, 24(9), pp.857-863.
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Melo, J.J.D., Andrade, F., Santana, P., Leitão, P., Afonso, J.R. & Piedade, J., (2003). Surveillance technology and strategy for management of Portugal's EEZ.
Portail, M., Brandily, C., Cathalot, C., Colaço, A., Gélinas, Y., Husson, B., Sarradin, P.M. & Sarrazin, J., (2018). Food-web complexity across hydrothermal vents on the Azores triple junction. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 131, pp.101-120.
van Dover, C.L. (1995). Ecology of Mid-Atlantic Ridge hydrothermal vents. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 87(1), pp.257–294.
van Dover, C.L., (2000). The Non-Vent Deep Sea. The Ecology of Deep-Sea Hydrothermal Vents (pp. 3–24). Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Wheeler, A.J., Murton, B., Copley, J., Lim, A., Carlsson, J., Collins, P., Dorschel, B., Green, D., Judge, M., Nye, V. & Benzie, J., (2013). Moytirra: Discovery of the first known deep‐sea hydrothermal vent field on the slow‐spreading Mid‐Atlantic Ridge north of the Azores. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems, 14(10), pp.4170-4184.
All images shown courtesy of © 2021 TBA21–Academy