Tidal Zones – Filming Between Life and Images

Kajsa Dahlberg

Informed by queer life practices, theories, and affinities, this documented artistic research project (doctoral thesis) draws from new materialist and post-humanist discourse in order to reconsider what role visual media play in the historical need to separate the human and the environmental. It asks, how do we challenge prevailing perceptions of film and photography as inexorably linked to ideas of progress and modernisation, to linear temporality, spatial separation, and to land-based thought? Based on the acknowledgement that we need to rethink our position as humans within the multiple habitats that make up the world, I investigate the ways in which the apparatus of film, rather than being an extension of human perception, attests to the material interdependences and co-productions that hold a potential for converging human and nonhuman perspectives. "Tidal Zones – Filming Between Life and Images" considers the cinematic space of the ocean alongside Jean Epstein’s film "Le Tempestaire" (1947); it follows early photographic chemical methods involving seaweed to both develop film and to examine the technical intra-activity of human and nonhuman regimes as part of photography itself. Within the scope of this research, I argue and demonstrate how film engages in a sensory and reciprocal involvement with the material world, one that addresses the ability to sense, not just with one’s eyes, but with the entire body. "Tidal Zones" are real locations, the habitat of a multitude of organisms, and the home of seaweeds. It is a place that is neither land nor sea but constitutes a zone with its own specific relationships and living conditions. In its refusal to be either or, it forms a (non-binary) temporal figuration between presence and absence, solid and liquid, life and death, dictated by the motions of spiral and circular time. This space, "Between Life and Images", is the chemical rockpool (the darkroom) out of which photography and film grew. The PhD submission consists of four film-works, "The Etna Epigraph" (2022), "Seaweed Film" (2023), "Coenaesthesis – It Is Not Even True That There Is Air Between Us" (2023) and "The Spiral Dramaturgy" (2019) along with the exhibition "The Tidal Zone" shown at Index - The Swedish Con-temporary Art Foundation, Stockholm, from 25 November 2022 to 12 February 2023 and at Havremagasinet, Länskonsthall Boden from 14 October 2023 to 11 February 2024. The films and documentation from the exhibitions are included in the submission, which also includes an “Opening Letter” and two texts called “Filming with the Ocean” and “Methodology of the Spiral”. This dissertation has been carried out and supervised within the graduate programme in Visual Arts at the Royal Institute of Art. The dissertation is presented at Lund University in the framework of the cooperation agreement between the Malmö Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University, and the Royal Institute of Art regarding doctoral education in the subject Visual Arts.

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Seaweed Film

16 mm film developed in seaweed, 28 min 09 s, loop, aspect ratio 4:3, sound, 2023. The installation includes a sculptural element in driftwood.

Installation images from Index - The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation, 2023. Photographer: Jean-Baptiste Béranger.

This film was developed with Bladderwrack, Serrated wrack, Nori, Wrack siphon weed, Sugar kelp, Egg wrack, Oarweed and Tangle, among others. It was recorded and sometimes developed at the following locations: Digermulen, Napp, Svolvær and Kabelvåg in Lofoten; Sørfjorden in Hardanger; Kydalsfossen and Bråstadfossen in Gjøvik; The Bantry Bay in Ireland; The Herbarium at the NTNU University Museum in Trondheim; as well as locations in and around Oslo. The film also includes a filmed fragment from SpongeBob SquarePants and an animation of Eadweard Muybridge’s collotype Two Women Kissing from 1887.

The film includes the voices of (in order of appearance):
Joe Riley, Artist and researcher, San Diego, USA. From an interview made online, July 12, 2023

Angelita Eriksen, co-founder of Lofoten Seaweed, Norway. From an interview made in Napp, Lofoten, Norway, April 15, 2021

Tommy Prestø, biologist and Senior En- gineer at the Herbarium TRH (botanical collections), NTNU University Museum in Trondheim, Norway. From interviews made in Trondheim on November 25, 2020, and September 30, 2021

Dolf D’hondt, environmental activist, Bantry Bay, Ireland. From interviews made in Bantry Bay on October 30, 2021, and online, September 11, 2023

Silje Forbord, Research Manager Sintef Ocean, Trondheim, Norway. From an interview made in Trondheim November 26, 2020

As well as seaweed-sounds recorded with a hydrophone

Production Support:
Camera: Kajsa Dahlberg
Editing: Astrid Skumsrud Johansen and Kajsa Dahlberg
Post Production: Simon Møller
Audio technician (mastering): Rune Baggerud
English translation: Ingela Teppy Flatin

Digitized at ARRI Media, München

This work was made possible with the support of:
The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm Arts Council Norway
Billedkunstnernes Vederlagsfond (BKV) IASPIS
Havremagasinet
Konstmuseet i Norr
Index – The Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation

Special thanks to:
The activists at Save the Native Kelp Forest, Bantry Bay, Ireland – Dolf D’hondt, Neidin McRae and Tomás O’Sullivan

Joe Riley, Tommy Prestø, Silje Forbord, Nikolai Buer, Morten Eriksen, Angelita Erik- sen and Tamara Singer

The students and staff at the Film Arts School in Kabelvåg

Julia Parks, Dagmar Brundert, Sabine Popp, Bo Bugge and, of course, the seaweeds

Watch the film here

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Kajsa Dahlberg - Tidal Zones – Filming Between Life and Images - 2024

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