Waterbodies and Bodies on Water: Matter. Movement. Medium
The sea that always seems like a metaphor, but one that is always moving, cannot be fixed, like a heart that is like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something that is altogether different and like everything at once.
--Rebecca Solnit, Seashell to Ear
In April 2022 I walked into an art gallery and experienced the film Lower than The Sky. At first, I thought the film depicted a journey, a timely rendition of a universal condition. Buzzwords abounded:mobility, migration, the problematic seas that take the lives of so many migrants, politics of water, borders. Soon I gave in to dystopian desires and thought the film shows a post-apocalyptic moment, when the waters have risen. I appreciated both scenarios for the matter-of-fact depiction of these ideas:somehow the image seemed impossible to bend to metaphorical suggestions or take moralistic positions. If poetic observations would be made, the film seemed to escape them all. By the end of the screening, I gladly resigned myself to not fully knowing what to feel/think/take away. Inhabiting this experiential unknown was an interesting prelude to more complex unknowns I would come to experience in the process of writing this paper. (...)
Images: Screengrabs of the film.
