Tabita RezaireDeep Down Tidal, 2017
‘Deep Down Tidal’ explores trans-coceanic networks examining the political and technological effects of water as a conductive interface for communication. From fibre optic cables to sunken cities, drowned bodies, hidden histories of navigation and sacred signal transmissions, the ocean is home to a complex set of communication networks. As modern information and communication technologies become omnipresent in Western lifestyles, we urgently need to understand the cultural, political and environmental forces that shape them.
Looking at the infrastructure of submarine fibre optic cables that carries and transfers our digital data, the artist considers that the cables are layered onto colonial shipping routes. The bottom of the sea becomes the interface of painful yet celebrated advancements masking the violent deeds of modernity. ‘Deep Down Tidal’ navigates the ocean as a graveyard for Black knowledge and technologies. From Atlantis, to the ‘Middle passage’, or refuge seekers presently drowning in the Mediterranean, the ocean abyss carries pains, lost histories and memories while simultaneously providing the global infrastructure for our current telecommunications. Research suggests that water has the ability to memorise and copy information, disseminating it through its streams. ’Deep Down Tidal’ enquires the complex cosmological, spiritual, political and technological entangled narratives sprung from water as an interface to understand the legacies of colonialism.
