Art Meets Ocean Awareness: ‘Dead Zones’ Documentary Screening
Last Wednesday 14th May, we had the honour to welcome artist Suzette Bousema and watch her new documentary, ‘Dead Zones’, together at the campus. The event was organized by the Atlantos Student Association. Suzette is a visual artist, combining research and creativity to convey messages - usually related to nature and natural phenomena - by reaching her spectators’ senses and making them see things in a new light.
‘Dead Zones’, the documentary, is part of a larger art series focused on the appearance of oxygen-deprived zones in coastal waters - a global problem that is spreading today. The documentary - the result of four years' work - featured multiple researchers giving their view on the issue, and showed how this type of habitat destruction is deeply connected to our activities on land (mainly agricultural). It also captured the consequent ghostly desolation and lack of life in, for example, Grevelingenmeer in the Netherlands.
During a short Q&A session afterwards, Suzette told us about the other artworks included in her series with dead zones as the overarching theme. She has combined multiple different techniques and materials to show as many different aspects and perspectives on the topic as possible; something that in itself is a challenge already, since a lack of oxygen cannot be seen and is therefore hard to substantiate or even picture. Besides providing different ways of getting a ‘sense’ for the essence of the problem and for the way it seeps through into other parts of the environment, it also covers possible solutions for the problem; ‘Seaweedfilter’ is a beautiful example, visualizing the potential of seaweed to filter excess nutrients from the water.
All in all, it was a fascinating and inspiring evening that made us again aware of the importance of the ocean, but also its connectedness to the land, to ourselves; and aware of the continuing pressure that it is under.
