Maddi Barber, Urpean Lurra (Land Underwater)
Sonia Levy, We Marry You, O Sea, as a Sign of True and Perpetual Dominion
Imani Jacqueline Brown, What Remains at the Ends of the Earth?
Programmed by Ifor Duncan
Hoisted by the Centre for Research Architecture, Department of Visual Cultures and Critical Ecologies Research Stream

Maddi Barber, Urpean Lurra (Land Underwater), 2019, 50 mins

In 2003, the Itoiz reservoir flooded seven villages and three nature reserves in the Pyrenees. Solidari@s with Itoiz documented the fight against its construction on video. Today, activists, former inhabitants of the area and the director of the film still dream about the region’s past and the land that remains underwater. A militant and dreamlike film that transports us into the collective mourning of a land engulfed by water.

Sonia Levy, We Marry You, O Sea, as a Sign of True and Perpetual Dominion, 2023, 18 min 12 secs

We Marry You, O Sea, as a Sign of True and Perpetual Dominion engages with Venice and its Lagoon "from below", bringing attention to the city's submerged, life-giving, and altered bio-geomorphological processes rather than on its often-recounted political and military histories. Underwater filmmaking exposes a fractured and troubled environment that complicates mainstream historical narratives that start above the water's surface. The film draws its title from the utterances spoken during The Marriage of the Sea, a ritual observed until the Venetian Republic's decline. In this ceremony, the Doge, the Republic's patriarch, would wed the lagoon by casting a golden ring into the water, declaring dominance over the sea. The artist reframes Venice's enduring relationship with its permeating waters, reflecting on its ongoing legacies of quests for mastery over watery environments.

Imani Jacqueline Brown, What Remains at the Ends of the Earth? 2022, 11 mins 29 secs
What remains at the ends of the earth? is a multimedia installation by Imani Jacqueline Brown that investigates the intersecting histories of land inhabited by Black Louisianans, and the vast network of fossil fuel infrastructure that overlays these sites today. What remains at the ends of the earth? aims to bring visibility to the ways fossil fuel production inherits the racist spatial, economic, and environmental logics imposed by slavery. The video animation pictures animated GIS lines and points representing pipelines, canals, and wells, as well as environmentally threatened coastal marshes with sacred groves of trees planted by enslaved people to memorialize their dead. In the face of ecological devastation, these trees are now a bulwark against soil erosion caused by the activities of petrochemical companies in this fragile ecosystem. The prints chart oil and gas pipelines. Rendered by Brown, these networks come to resemble twinkling stars in a night sky—a reminder of the constellation of extractive values that guide modern consumption. By mapping these intertwining legacies, What remains at the ends of the earth? suggests a way forward through landscape reintegration and economic reparations.
Followed by discussion with the artists

Maddi Barber has a degree in Audiovisual Communication and an MA in Visual Anthropology from the University of Manchester. Her work has been screened at festivals such as Visions du Réel, San Sebastian (Zabaltegi), FidMarseille, Reykjavik, Curtocircuito, Zinebi, Ji.hlava, Porto Post Doc and Las Palmas, among others. She is currently working on the development of her first feature film, Claros de bosque.

Sonia Levy's inquiry-led practice operates at the confluence of knowledge practices, employing filmmaking as a tool for site-based inquiries and interdisciplinary collaborations. Her work considers shifting modes of engagement with more-than-human and queries Western expansionist and extractivist logics. She is the 2023-2024 recipient of the European Marine Board artist-in-residence. She was the 2022 selected artist of the S+T+ARTS4Water residency hosted by TBA21 in Venice and the 2021 commissioned artist at Radar Loughborough and Aarhus University's "Ecological Globalization Research Group". Sonia is an Associate Lecturer for Media Studies at the RCA School of Architecture.
Imani Jacqueline Brown is an artist, activist, and architectural researcher from New Orleans, USA, based in London. Her work investigates extractive environmental and economic systems (from colonial genocide and slavery to contemporary fossil fuel production), as well as police and corporate impunity, to expose the layers of violence and resistance that comprise the foundations of settler-colonial society. Imani is an advanced researcher at Forensic Architecture and is currently a PhD candidate at Queen Mary, University of London, as well as an Associate Lecturer in MA Architecture at the Royal College of Arts. She received her MA with distinction from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2019.

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/35713