Low and Slow

Abstract

Low and Slow investigates how video and performance can cultivate alternative modes of ocean-based education and advocacy. Working across four interconnected modalities, the dissertation considers how research creation in visual art can shift human–ocean relations by reorienting attention, sensation, and storytelling. The first chapter examines the psychological, cultural, and capitalist implications of remaining on the ocean’s surface. Using the 2019 Wish Whale performance as a point of departure, it analyzes three forms of surface encounter: the ocean’s visible threshold; the living or deceased bodies of marine mammals; and Ron Broglio’s theorization of surface phenomenology as a site of interspecies meeting. Chapter two moves just below the surface through transitional and boundary objects as catalysts for oceanic research. Through interviews with artists and scholars, the chapter develops a set of video vignettes and interviews shaped around a series of to-scale ceramic whale eyes exchanged for collaborative responses. The third chapter dives further, exploring states of being lost and resurfacing—both materially and metaphorically—through six letters addressed to a humpback whale named “Ursula.” Interwoven autobiographical narratives and oceanic disappearance stories draw on Astrida Neimanis’ Bodies of Water to frame a feminist posthuman hydrocommons. The final chapter turns inward, tracing the physiological and sensorial transformations of freediving. Designed as a meditative performance script, the chapter reflects on bodily change, Eva Hayward’s concept of “fingeryeyes,” and the regenerative capacities of starfish in relation to trans embodiment. All practical components are housed within a virtual ocean environment, enabling viewers to navigate texts, videos, performances, and sculptures. This evolving space serves as a platform for future artworks and collaborations oriented toward oceanic care and conservation.