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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Coenaesthesis – It Is Not Even True That There Is Air Between Us

Mixed formats, 47 min 18 s, loop, aspect ratio 4:3, sound, 2023

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

This film is constructed from audio recordings of two conversations and a collection of archival films.

Conversation number one included Stian Gledje Bekkvik, Pia Aimée Tordly, and Janne Amalie Svit and took place at Notam, Oslo. March 19, 2022.

Conversation number two included Ylva Westerlund, Miriam Döring, and Marie Malatsion and took place at Notam, Oslo. March 23, 2022.

Archival footage:

Shevchenko, Vladimir. Chernobyl: Chronicle of Difficult Weeks, (1987). Excerpt. Courtesy of The Video Project, San Francisco, and the Glasnost Film Festival.

Depiction of Chernobyl right after the nuclear disaster of 1986.

The residual radiation of the disaster leaves its mark on the film through optical effects that appear as light flares and distinctive clicking noises in the audio track.
Kyzyma, Viktor. Unknown title, (ca 1970). Courtesy of Urban Media Archive, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine. With special thanks to Oleg Chorny.

The footage was originally produced in the 1970s by Viktor Kyzyma, a member of a film collective operating at a collective farm in rural Ukraine.

The film was damaged by agricultural chemicals, including lime.
Henry Lester Institute. Shanghai reel 4, (1933). Courtesy of The Wellcome Collection.

Amateur unedited footage of the Shanghai harbour with scenes from everyday life in Shanghai.

The film is damaged and acetic – the picture has started to reticulate.
Page, Ruth. B & H Dupe (ballet demo), (ca 1930). Courtesy of Chicago Film Archive.

16mm film showing Ruth Page demonstrating ballet combinations.

The film shows signs of redox damage – localized oxidation of metallic elements in the film emulsion.
Berge, Hans. Nr. 366/1, (ca 1910/25). Courtesy of the National Library of Nor- way (Nasjonalbiblioteket). With special thanks to film archivist Tina Stenkulla Anckarman.

The recordings are from Sarpefossen and Borregaard and show examples of infrastructure improvements in Norway in the early twentieth century, including dams, bridges and ferries.

The emulsion has been completely or partially dissolved due to humidity and the film being stored in bad climatic conditions.
KQED, San Francisco. Part 1 of a KQED news special at San Francisco State College, (1968). Courtesy of Bay Area TV Archive, at San Francisco State Univer- sity and KQED San Francisco.

Newsreel footage of student protests at San Francisco State College in 1968.

The reel is damaged by mould growth.
Kuttner, Peter. Cause Without a Rebel, (1965). Excerpt. Courtesy of Chicago Film Archive.

Excerpt from a film addressing political apathy amongst white college students during the civil rights movement in the United States.

The film shows signs of physical damage, with ‘objects’ floating through the image.

During the process of making this work I was invited by PRAKSIS in Oslo to suggest a theme for a one-month residency that was to be held in March 2020. I proposed a process of collective research into relationships be- tween body and environment, investigating the impact of chemicals and toxins on human and non-human bodies. It was called ‘Nature Scribbles and Flesh Read’. This residency and its participants were important for the pro- cess of making this work. More information on the residency and its participants can be found here: praksisoslo.org/residencieslist/r21

In addition to the lived experiences of my own and other’s bodies, further sources of research were:

The writings of Rachel Carson, most notably Silent Spring, published in 1962 by Houghton Mifflin.

The writings of Stacy Alaimo, specifically Bodily Natures – Science, Environment, and the Material Self, published in 2010 by Indiana University Press, but also Exposed – Environmental Politics & Pleasures in Posthuman Times, published in 2016 by University of Minnesota Press.

Ashford, Nicholas & Miller, Claudia, Chemical Exposures – Low Levels and High Stakes, second edition published in 1998 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Berkson, Jacob B, A Canary’s Tale: the Final Battle, Volume I the Odyssey, self-published by the author in 1996

Tuana, Nancy, Viscous Porosity: Witnessing Katrina, pp. 188–213 in Material Feminisms, edited by Stacy Alaimo & Susan Hekman, published in 2008 by Indiana University press

Neimanis, Astrida, ‘Hydrofeminism: Or, On Becoming a Body of Water’ in: Undutiful Daughters: Mobilizing Future Concepts, Bodies and Subjectivities in Feminist Thought and Practice, eds. Henriette Gunkel, Chrysanthi Nigianni and Fanny Söderbäck. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Nixon, Rob, Slow Violence and the Environ- mentalism of the Poor, published in 2011 by Harvard University Press.

Production Support:
Editing: Kajsa Dahlberg
Research assistant: Lexie Owen
Audio technician (recording): Marte Aas

Audio technician (mastering): Merete Mongstad
English translation: Ingela Teppy Flatin

This work was made possible through the support of:
The Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm

Fond for lyd og bilde, Arts Council Norway

Notam – the Norwegian Centre for Technology, Art and Music

Special thanks to:
The participants in the film for sharing their stories: Stian Gledje Bekkvik, Miriam Döring, Marie Malatsion, Janne Amalie Svit, Pia Aimée Tordly and Ylva Westerlund

PRAKSIS, Nicholas John Jones, Charlotte Teyler as well as the participants of PRAKSIS R21

Forbund for Kjemisk Miljøintoleranse (Asso- ciation for Chemical Environmental Intolerance), Norway

Also, a special thanks to the archives:

Chicago Film Archive
Bay Area TV Archive, at San Francisco State University and KQED San Francisco National Library of Norway and archivist Tina Stenkulla Anckarman

The Wellcome Collection, London
Urban Media Archive, Center for Urban History of East Central Europe, Lviv, Ukraine with special thanks to Oleg Chorny as well as The Video Project, San Francisco, and the Glasnost Film Festival

Watch the film here

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

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Coenaesthesis – It Is Not Even True That There Is Air Between Us