I am a UK artist who works across different media to develop work which mostly focuses on watery human/nature relationships. I use experimental methodologies to develop an art practice that aspires to contribute to experimental geography, to foreground its environmental and ecological focus.
Having worked extensively with the Atlantic Ocean, the prospect of meeting the Baltic Sea for the first time meant that I would be dealing with a lot of unknowns, therefore an experimental approach was necessary! My plan was to document, through polaroid photography, the many ways in which ‘body as location’ could be interpreted. Human bodies, algae bodies, watery bodies, island bodies, vessels as bodies and so forth. I arrived with the vague notion that the polaroids would later need to be subjected to forms of corrosion to better represent what began as nebulous ideas. First, I had to take the images!
My first impressions of Godzilla, berthed in a quiet harbour on a beautiful, calm day was that actually, the gaping hole between the two hulls was a terrifying prospect to have to cross! The practicalities of personal hygiene were mere incidentals in comparison. However, Andy and Merja quickly put me at my ease, and soon I was (in my opinion at least) able to nimbly navigate the boat. The cheeky little otter that popped up whilst we ate supper also helped make me feel at home. I loved the cosy cabin where I slept (though a few new pillows would be a good purchase for next years’ adventure). Although my Godzilla experience was mostly on land, I absolutely loved sitting above deck as we moved through the water. I saw a lot of bodies, in new locations, and as new locations.
My experience (perhaps more so than other artists on this years’ residency) was a stitching, or a tacking, between land and sea, sea and land. At no point did I experience a watery world where no land is visible; the geography pulled us into harbours, under bascule bridges, along shorelines of lush summer greenery. I took 50 polaroid photographs. I joined revellers at a festival, and mourners at a concentration camp, I saw fireworks, and disused bomb factories, I entered quietly magnificent medieval churches and sauntered through loudly colourful reconstructed villages. One misty morning Andy and I witnessed the early and noisy arrival, then departure, of a large flock of seabirds.
Clearly the Baltic Sea is a highly contested body of water. Whilst this is true of all bodies of water, the unique geopolitics of a sea that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North and Central European Plain regions mean that the contestations are both deeply historical and actively present. Unlike on the Atlantic, in the Baltic sea you know you are never far from land, but which land, whose land? And therefore, does the sea bring these people together, or does it form a kind of neutral zone? How does the Baltic Sea enter the shared imagination of these culturally diverse nations?
I have so much more to explore now I reflect upon my too short introduction to this watery corner of the world. Facts such as it is the world’s largest brackish water basin, and that it is only barely tidal, fascinate me. For the time being I will work through these questions, and sit with the memories and queries that surface whilst I develop my polaroids into a body of work.
I will share my work-in-progress at a conference in Poland in October. Baltic Waterscapes: Entanglements in Natureculture takes place at Gdansk University, in collaboration wit Utrecht University. So now I have a deadline! Currently I am in the process of printing scans of the polaroids onto Corton steel so that oxidisation will bring rust into play. I am also experimenting with decades old, very out of date, liquid emulsion which I’m optimistic will also infer corrosion, time passing, imperfect bodies and compromised locations. I need to make, experiment and reflect a few times before I can explain the why and the what of the project, but the where is obvious, where else? Onboard Godzilla, Imagining Godzilla.
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