Deep Down Tidal, 2017

video, 18´44´´
2017

Deep Down Tidal explores transoceanic networks examining the political and technological affects of water as a conductive interface for communication. From fibre optic cables to sunken cities, drowned bodies, hidden histories of navigations and sacred signal transmissions, the ocean is home to a complex set of communication networks. Looking at the infrastructure of submarine fibre optic cables that carries and transfers our digital data, it is striking to realize that the cables are layered onto colonial shipping routes. Once again the bottom of the sea becomes the interface of painful yet celebrated advancements masking the violent deeds of modernity. Deep Down Tidal navigates the ocean as a graveyard for Black knowledge and technologies. From Atlantis, to the “Middle Passage” or refuge seekers presently drowning in the Mediterranean, the ocean abyss carries pain, lost histories and memories while simultaneously providing the global infrastructure for our current telecommunications. Could the violence of the Internet – inflicted upon Africa and more generally Black people – lie in its physical architecture? Deep Down Tidal enquires about the complex cosmological, spiritual, political and technological entangled narratives sprung from water as an interface to understand the legacies of colonialism.

photo: Małgorzata Kujda