"In the language of climate, water is dialectical: It is overabundance and scarcity; needed as well as dreaded. Psychologically, it can represent the unconscious, the maternal, the prelapsarian. Artist Deborah Jack disrupts any viewer's impulse to find recreational soothing in the ocean's tidal landscape, as she openly critiques the legitimacy of cartography, empire, and ecological adaptation. Jack's six-channel video installation "a sea desalts, creeping in the collapse... in the expanse...a rhizome looks for reason... whispers an elegy instead""
"Estuaries are partially enclosed bodies of water in which freshwater from rivers and streams mixes with the ocean's salt water. They form ecotones, where different ecosystems overlap - an in-between space that shrinks and expands with changing weather conditions. The installation is organized as two sets of adjacent screens and two single-channel screens, the latter abutting in the center of the room. They depict scenes from coastal Maine, Brazil, St. Maarten, and Louisiana, inviting us to contemplate the visuals while complicating that process."
The six-channel video installation juxtaposes coastal footage from Maine, Brazil, St. Maarten, and Louisiana to explore estuaries as sites where freshwater and ocean meet and ecosystems overlap. The work frames water as both climate emergency and colonial oversight while interrogating cartography, empire, and ecological adaptation. Estuaries are presented as ecotones that shrink and expand with changing weather. The installation's screens are arranged as two adjacent pairs with two single-channel screens abutting the room's center. A sonorously haunting score by the Diaphanous Ensemble amplifies minor chords, low notes, and high-pitched screes to complicate contemplative viewing.
Read at Hyperallergic
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