A cinematic journey across space and time, Emilija Škarnulytė‘s Aphotic Zone peers back from the future through dark oceans to witness the threats of climate crisis, economic extractivism and the idealistic prospects of science.
Installation view at SIes + Höke, Düsseldorf, 2024.
Luminous sea jellies beam over choirs of fish as we travel 4km deep past the Pacific seamounts of Costa Rica to reach the pitch black—‘aphotic’—zone of the ocean. In the depths, a Remotely Operated Vehicle carefully samples deep sea corals with its robotic arms, while images of the undulating seafloor generated from 3D laser scanner data and the towering Duga radar (a Soviet-era missile defense system near Chernobyl, Ukraine) shift and scale into a landscape of prehistoric life and advanced technology. Both documentary and oneiric, the film imbues dream-like mythologies to open worlds that are beyond human scale and conception, yet still are affected by our presence.
Melding otherworldly poetry with scientific investigation, Škarnulytė joined Dr Erik Cordes and further Marine biologists from Philiadelphia’s Temple University in their endeavours to identify a super coral species that can thrive under the warming and acidification of the oceans as part of the shooting process.
Installation view at SIes + Höke, Düsseldorf, 2024.
In Aphotic Zone more-than-human and machinic agencies curiously coexist with the sonic memory of a distant civilisation: mixed by Oscar-winning engineers Jaime Baksht and Michelle Couttolenc, the work's soundtrack is drawn from a field recording made in Mexico City’s Zócalo (main plaza) on the 500th anniversary of Spain's conquest of Tenochtitlan. The former capital of the Aztec Empire becomes a sonic ghost reverberating ecological devastation and colonial destruction, as contemporary Mexican street sounds become a phantom call, warning us of the cataclysms yet to come.
Installation view at SIes + Höke, Düsseldorf, 2024.
Aphotic Zone ultimately guides a subtle meditation on surviving the ongoing ravages of imperialistic and anthropocentric sensibilities.
Installation view as part of Eternal Return, Tate Modern, London, 2021.
Installation view at SIes + Höke, Düsseldorf, 2024.
A Film by Emilija Škarnulytė
Commissioned and produced by Fondazione In Between Art Film for the exhibition Penumbra at Complesso dell’Ospedaletto, on the occasion of Biennale Arte 2022, Venice.
Editing: Vytautas Tinteris
Composer: Jokūbas Čižikas
Sound: Jaime Baksht, Michelle Couttolenc
Production: Beatrice Bulgari and Leonardo Bigazzi
