Exposition

Tidal Zones – Filming Between Life and Images (2024)

Kajsa Dahlberg
open exposition

About this exposition

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.
typeresearch exposition
keywordsFilm, materiality, feminist methodology, cinema, art, moving images, Jean Epstein, queer cinema, temporality, queer temporality, eco-developing, seaweed, spiral dramaturgy, more-than-human realms, nonhuman, Ulla Ryum, post-humanism, queer life practices, high sensitivity, environmental illness, seeing with the body, non-linear storytelling, filming with the ocean, new materialism
date02/05/2024
published13/05/2024
last modified13/05/2024
statuspublished
share statuspublic
affiliationRoyal Institute of Art, Stockholm
copyrightKajsa Dahlberg
licenseCC BY-NC-ND
languageEnglish
urlhttps://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/2659625/2767303
doihttps://doi.org/10.22501/rc.2659625
published inResearch Catalogue


Simple Media

id name copyright license
2703632 The Etna Epigraph_Documetation_Dahlberg_02.jpg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767342 Still_Seaweed_Film_01_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767345 Still_Seaweed_Film_02_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767418 Filming_with_the_Ocean–Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767425 Methodology_of_the_Spiral–Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767439 Opening_Letter_and_Acknowledgements_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767826 Ryum_illustration Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2767839 The Spiral Dramaturgy_Documentation_Dahlberg_01 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768066 Still_Seaweed_Film_03_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768103 The_Etna_Epigraph_Dahlberg_FILM Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768105 Seaweed_Film_Dahlberg_FILM Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768255 Seaweed Film_Documentation_Dahlberg_02 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768403 Coenaesthesis_Dahlberg_FILM Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768432 The_Spiral_Dramaturgy_Dahlberg_FILM Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768476 Coenaesthesis_Documentation_Dahlberg_02 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768595 The Spiral Dramaturgy_Documentation_Dahlberg_02 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768687 thumb-6 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768696 thumb Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768697 thumb-7 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2768700 thumb-5 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772410 The Etna Epigraph_still_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772418 _Coenaesthesis_Documentation_Dahlberg_02 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772730 Registration_sheet_Spikblad Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772735 Information_films–Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772803 Spiral med text Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772898 Menybilde_03_Still_Seaweed_Film_03_Dahlberg Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772901 Menybilde_04_Coenaesthesis_Documentation_Dahlberg_01 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772903 Menybilde_06_The Spiral Dramaturgy_Documentation_Dahlberg_01 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772973 The Etna Epigraph_still_Dahlberg_02 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved
2772976 _Seaweed Film_Documentation_Dahlberg_01 Kajsa Dahlberg All rights reserved

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