DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition

vincent roumagnac

Data Ocean Theatre (D.O.T.) is a four-year artistic research project that explores the intersection of myths, Western theatre memory, new media, digital animism, climate emergency, sea and ocean transformations, queer subcultures, and technological mutations in relation to aspects of “submersion” as a contemporary living condition. Expanding on the claimed unsustainability of Western theatre’s anthropocentric foundations, D.O.T. examines how the notion and practice of the stage transform amidst climate urgency, technological hypergrowth, and discipline-fluid hybridization. It seeks to generate experiments on a new temporal ecology of the stage, examining how theatre-making infrastructures might transition within a multi-agential dynamic of emergence. D.O.T. appears, disappears, and reappears through a series of polymorphic artworks and research affordances based on the ecodramaturgical consideration of the simultaneous phenomenon of 1. the rising sea and ocean levels, 2. the exponential growth of big data in our informational age, and 3. the emotional overload caused by the latter two happening, projection, and prophecy. D.O.T. explores inherited sea-and-ocean-oriented myths and revisits theatre plays with a marine backdrop, looking simultaneously into contemporary nautical vocabulary and sea imagery used as metaphors for computational realities. D.O.T. proposes to re-mythologise Western theatre foundations by forming an alternative pantheon for a queer, hydrofeminist, and technoanimist reset of the “tragic,” at the interplay between a syncretic marine mythology and the ambiguities of “technology-as-monster” narratives. In D.O.T. project, the forces and fragilities of transforming marine ecosystems intersect with algorithmic-conditioned life and crossbreeding of diverse art disciplines and research fields based on collaborations, generating imaginary prototypes for future societal constructions in the floods. D.O.T. is structured around several key components: the prologue Simultaneous Environments, featuring a series of experimental works; the central project Tragedy and the Goddexxes, which culminates in three public exhibitions; and a series of workshops, residencies, and a final publication in the form of an exposition on the Research Catalogue. This final publication of the DATA OCEAN THEATRE postdoctoral artistic research project (2021–2024) titled 'DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition' performs on the Research Catalogue as both an aesthetico-epistemic object in its own right and as an a posteriori account, or catalogue raisonné, of the project. It also acts as a supplement to the author's doctoral publication, Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses), completing the latter to form a diptych on the Research Catalogue. Similar to the doctoral publication, the non-linear, non-hierarchical, and non-chronological reading, or hyper-reading, of Data Ocean Theatre (Out of the Blue) invites its visitors to navigate freely and compose their own fluid, archipelagic, and tidal experience to make sense of the project as a whole.

71/2011Kyoto + High Tide Low Tide (Marée Haute Marée Basse)

DATA OCEAN THEATRE Tragedy and the Goddexxes VI. EXODOS

In collaboration with Aurélie Pétrel (Visual arts, Photography – France)

Direct print on Plexiglas 120x190 cm - Installation with a protocol of reactivation

Over the past 20 years, Aurélie Petrel has amassed a collection of over 2200 "latent shots", each meticulously catalogued with its order number and shooting date/location. These archived images are printed on Baryta paper (standard format / 40 x 50 cm) and stored in black boxes within a custom-made metallic device, remaining dormant until activated. Occasionally, these latent images emerge from dormancy, responding to invitations to activate them in specific contexts. Upon activation, they transform into architecture/context-responsive photographic objects of varying materials and sizes, offering a relational and situated haptic experience.

To launch their collaboration for Data Ocean Theatre/Tragedy and the Godexxes/VI. EXODOS, Vincent sent three images to Aurélie, who was unable to travel to Helsinki at the time, and who offered to remotely play the game of site-specificity. With these three images – of the gallery window, of the adjacent soccer field seen through the window, and of the sea just beyond the small hills around the field – Vincent suggested to Aurélie "What if the waters of the Baltic went right up to the gallery wall?"

In response to Vincent's invitation, the project's dramaturgy and the exhibition site, Aurélie activated the latent shot 71/2011Kyoto - on which one can see a night view of a flooded soccer field in Kyoto after a violent typhoon storm - sending the file to Vincent and asking him to order a direct print on Plexiglas the size of the window, and install it in front of the latter.

In addition to their individual practices, Aurélie and Vincent collaborate as the artistic binome Pétrel I Roumagnac (duo). Their dynamic works consist of "photoscenic objects" in constant displacement. Reflecting the ethos of their partnership, Vincent proposed activating 71/2011Kyoto through an on-site performative act: according to the Helsinki tidal calendar, the photographic object is positioned in front of the gallery window during high tide and moved beside the window onto the gallery floor during low tide. (Activation: 15-21.6.2023)

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