Alto Mar
HD Video and sound, collaboration with João Pimenta Gomes, 6’21 min. Wall collage, tidal waves, semi-translucent film, variable dimensions. 2022 Vimeo link
In ‘We Belong to Gaia’ (2006), scientist James Lovelock imagines the Earth “like a kind of animal… like a planet that behaves as if it were alive… “Metaphor is important because to deal with, understand and even ameliorate the fix we are now in over global change requires us to know the true nature of the Earth and imagine it as the largest living thing in the solar system, not something inanimate like that disreputable contraption ‘spacecraft Earth’.
During her residency in Portugal, Keren Benbenisty looked daily at the ocean through the Cascais Tide-gauge, a 19th century device that records and plots changes in sea level live. Recorded analogically in the form of a tide chart, the data reflects events taking place thousands of kilometers with a time lag. Inspired by the thought of Lovelock, the artist wanted to translate these recordings, archived for more than a hundred years, into a score interpreted by a human voice, making the ocean a body “behaving as if it were alive.” The sound collage, which responds to the wall collage, is an act of translation and “embodiment” that underlines the complex relationship between man and nature in the time of the Anthropocene. Taken as a whole, the work bears witness to the relationships of interdependence that link not only the different regions of the world but also human beings to the living world, thus resisting the deleterious belief in the autonomy of beings and nations. The video, filmed inside the historical monument, the Maregrafo do Cascais, is a collaborative work with the artist João Pimenta Gomes who composed the sound piece from a score by the American composer Harry Partch, adding the voice of Portuguese Fado singer – Carminho.
Installation view, Les Labos d’Aubervillers, France
Installation view, Centro de Artes e Criatividade, Torres Vedras, Portugal
Sound performance by João Pimenta Gomes, Museu da Presidencia da Republica, Lisbonne, Portugal