First Cut

back

All was Ocean! All was Joy! (Or, How the Humans Broke the Ocean's Heart)

Georgie Brinkman

MA Artistic Research aquatic fairytale North Sea barrier

Patchworking together disparate research sources – including field work, biological reports, poetry, children's books, archeological lectures and cooking – into an aquatic fairytale, this work presents the North Sea as a being in and of herself. A being who, just like you, can have a broken heart.

Reflecting on the Dutch storm surge barrier – the Oosterscheldekering – as an intervention that cut the ocean's body in half, we are demanded to question the implications of artificially separating salt and freshwater for the marine life that constitute the watery underworld of the ocean.

Through a dreamt conversation with the North Sea, in a world that exists in the mind's eye, the barrier is revealed as not only a physical but an allegorical divide erected by humanity in order to separate Fact from Fiction. Here, stories live in the salty depths of the ocean and are filtered through The Fact Checker (AKA the Oosterscheldekering) until the hard truths are revealed and solidified as rock deposits in the freshwater. However, reality is called into question when a group of otherworldly sea slugs become entangled with the story of Nehalennia, the ancient Goddess of the North Sea.

programme

9 July
Export as embodied imaginations

exhibition

8—11 July
Royal Academy of Art, The Hague: BA.K01

back