On Aftermaths And Afterlives, Afterimages And Aftersounds: Mourning-As-Witnessing Ecological Destruction In The Southern Ocean/S

Abstract

Water/Log' is an ongoing, site-responsive body of creative work in which I focus on the entangled histories of the ‘harvesting’ of whales, seals, seabirds and guano. I follow material and geopolitical flows in the enduring aftermaths of colonialism, extractivism, necro-capitalism and military-industrial expansion – from the mainland shores and islands along the southern African coast, to the South Atlantic, Indian and Southern oceans, the sub-Antarctic islands and, finally, to the frozen ‘end/s of the earth’: Antarctica. In an itinerant and associative presentation of still (moving) images and sound from 'Water/Log' – alongside extracts from diverse archival sources and an earlier project, 'Salt-Water-Bodies: From an Atlas of Loss' – I consider the work of art in terms of multispecies ethics of care and complicity, grappling with the unfinished labours of postmortem mourning-as-witnessing and a yearning towards more wake-full and just planetary futures. Unspectacular afterimages and aftersounds. Stories told in pieces, in parts.