Experimental Marine Ecology Live Film Performance: “Intertidal” | Oakland

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Inspired by the work and thought of 1940s marine scientist Ed Ricketts and the technical approach of french filmmaker Jean Painleve in the same era, Intertidal, by Vancouver-based artist Alex MacKenzie, presents a submersive exploration of the tidal zones and marine life off the shores of Western Canada.

Using both camera and non-camera approaches, this performance-based work presented on two analytic 16mm projectors speaks to the fragility of both the film medium and the marine environment explored.

Travelling as far west as Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island and north to the tip of Naikoon on Haida Gwaii, this route expressly emulates that which Ricketts and his close friend author John Steinbeck intended to revisit prior to Ricketts’ untimely death in 1948. The scope and materiality of both emulsion and environment are explored using elements as wide ranging as photograms, alternative film chemistry, live manipulation, and the very movement of the tides themselves.

At once personal, political, visual and ecological, the work gives equal weight to representation and abstraction. A project of process through exploration, Intertidal is a marine ecology for emulsion: teeming and tenuous, fleeting and alive.

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