By Ifor Duncan & Sonia Levy
My name is Sonia Levy. I'm an artist and filmmaker. For many years, my work has focused on ocean and ecological themes. I'm particularly interested in examining how spaces have been transformed by extractive and expansionist logics and politics. This exploration is central to my detailed, site-based inquiries.
In the past, I’ve worked on coral restoration projects and engaged with ideas surrounding the canalization and linearisation of waterways. More recently, my work has focused on the Venetian Lagoon.
I’m Ifor Duncan, a researcher, writer, and emerging moving-image practitioner. I teach Visual Cultures and Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. My work examines the multi-species and human implications of political violence, often through relationships with bodies and submerged spaces. You’ll see clips from my video In Between during this presentation.
In In Between, bubbles at the surface breathe the deep. One diver remarks on feeling high upon surfacing after filming a wreck 30 meters below. Divers ascend, embodying the pressure of depth, bringing images to the surface to envelop us.
The arts and humanities have recently turned to submerged spaces and practices of submersion as fertile sites for counter-politics and alternative histories. While submergence can interrogate and destabilize dominant narratives, we argue that it can also—if unexamined—reinforce them.
We turn to Leni Riefenstahl's 2002 work, Impressions of the Deep, to explore how image-making practices intersect with colonial and extractive politics. By examining her work, we highlight the ethical and political consequences of image-making and call attention to the kinds of worlds these practices produce—intentionally or through negligence.
Transparency vs. Turbidity: Image-Making and Submerged Realities
Oligotrophic waters, characterized by low nutrient levels, are prized by underwater filmmakers for their clarity and visibility. These conditions often result from minimal suspended particulate matter, which contrasts with turbid waters where high levels of suspended particles obscure visibility. Turbidity, however, reflects the complex dynamics of aquatic environments.
In healthy oceans, turbidity can signify thriving ecosystems, as nutrient inputs drive plankton growth and sustain diverse life forms. By contrast, oligotrophic conditions often reflect limited nutrient availability, as seen in tropical coral reef environments where nutrient recycling maintains biodiversity despite scarce resources.
Yet, this delicate balance can be disrupted by anthropogenic inputs like fertiliser runoff or sewage discharge, resulting in eutrophication. Eutrophic waters, flooded with excess nutrients, often experience harmful algal blooms and oxygen depletion, exemplifying how capitalist processes permeate aquatic systems.
The search for pristine, clear underwater images—often achieved in oligotrophic conditions—sidesteps the messy, turbid realities of ecological processes and the broader socio-political histories they encapsulate.
The Fascist Aesthetics of Riefenstahl
In Impressions of the Deep, Riefenstahl’s visual aesthetic prioritises clarity, transparency, and idealised beauty. This approach echoes the fascist aesthetics critiqued by Susan Sontag in Fascinating Fascism. Sontag argues that Riefenstahl’s work celebrates formal purity, harmony, and strength, erasing historical and ecological specificities in favor of a timeless, decontextualised vision.
Riefenstahl herself expressed frustration with plankton and strong currents that disrupted her pursuit of "perfect" underwater images—an ironic stance given that such conditions often signify ecological vitality. Her refusal to engage with these ecological complexities reflects an aesthetic of denial and obfuscation.
Submersion as Political Practice
Through Impressions of the Deep, Riefenstahl constructs a sanitised underwater world detached from its socio-environmental contexts. By erasing the histories embedded in these submerged spaces, she perpetuates colonial and extractive narratives, presenting nature as timeless and apolitical.
Donna Haraway’s Situated Knowledges critiques such "God’s-eye" perspectives for claiming objectivity while erasing their own material and semiotic conditions. By framing underwater worlds as aesthetic objects devoid of context, Riefenstahl’s work embodies this critique, severing aquatic environments from their political and ecological realities.
Toward Turbid Aesthetics
In contrast, turbidity offers a way to reimagine image-making practices. Bridget Crone describes turbidity as both an optical and experiential phenomenon—an embodied quality of water that reflects the density of suspended histories and pollutants. This perspective encourages us to move beyond transparency, embracing the sensory and political complexities of submerged environments.
Edouard Glissant’s Poetics of Relation frames opacity as a counterpoint to the colonial desire for transparency. His alluvial poetics liken submerged sediments to layered histories—fertile, yet often ignored. Riefenstahl’s pursuit of clarity erases these sediments, denying the histories and politics embedded in submerged spaces.
Resuspending Histories
Our own practices aim to attend to the turbid histories of submergence. By examining how extractive and chemical politics infiltrate and transform aquatic environments, we explore how histories are suspended, resuspended, and reorganised. From deep-sea mining to eutrophication, these disruptions reshape the material and historical layers of submerged spaces.
Discussion Themes:
Turbidity vs. Clarity:
Turbidity (cloudiness in water) reflects complex ecological realities but is often dismissed in favor of clear, visually appealing imagery.
Clear imagery aligns with extractive and colonialist representations, often ignoring the ecological or political realities of submerged environments.
Fascist Aesthetic in Visual Media:
Riefenstahl’s work emphasizes purity, beauty, and detachment from ecological context, perpetuating authoritarian ideals of form and composition.
Her search for underwater harmony reflects ideological biases tied to aesthetic purity over environmental realities like acidification or eutrophication.
Capitalism’s Impact on Water:
Capitalist practices, like fertilizer runoff, create eutrophic conditions (nutrient overload), altering ecosystems and highlighting water as a repository of waste.
Turbidity reveals the layers of history, waste, and ecological disruption embedded in water.
Challenges in Representation:
How can image-making reflect the layered, messy histories and politics of submerged spaces?
Calls for contextualising images and challenging the visual norms perpetuated by mainstream documentaries.
The Camera as a Tool of Capture:
Recognising the camera’s historical role in abstraction and dominance.
Imagining new ways to create images that situate themselves within their material and historical contexts.
Conclusions
How can image-making practices reflect the dynamic, layered realities of submerged spaces without succumbing to idealised visions? Can we develop a harmony rooted in ecological and political realities, rather than idealised aesthetics?
While there may be no definitive answer, our work suggests the need for situated, context-aware approaches. By grounding images in their historical and ecological contexts, we can challenge dominant paradigms and foreground the complexities of submerged worlds.
Submerged environments offer rich metaphors for layered histories, with sediment and turbidity representing hidden narratives.
Breaking dominant visual paradigms requires rethinking tools and methods, and embracing complexity over simplicity.
The conversation points to the need for alternative ontologies and histories to counter reductive, extractive practices.
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