Memory of a Shrinking, Sinking, Living-Dead Sea, 2024
Virtual Reality soundwalk
Memory of a Shrinking, Sinking, Living-Dead Sea explores a fragile, religious and regional site of healing, cyclically teetering on the brink of demise. Hundreds of millions of years ago, this geographical site was part of the Mediterranean Sea. Eventually, the Earth's crust shifted downwards, forming a graben, and creating what we now know as the lowest point on our planet. Today, the Dead Sea is shrinking and sinking, exacerbated by geopolitical tensions over regional water control. Since the mid 20th century, the Dead Sea is no longer being fed the way it was by the Jordan River. Maritime borders, continued extraction practices from Jordan, Israel and within the Palestinian occupied West Bank, and an ever changing climate has promoted its imminent extinction. The title itself nods to the notion of species on the verge of extinction, often termed as the "living-dead" by biologists. The Dead Sea, diminishing at a rate of about one meter annually, is also besieged by the emergence of sinkholes, triggering the collapse of vast surrounding areas of land. The ground is literally “too fragile to hold” the built environment, making it a disappearing space.
The project delves into the act of remembering - individually, collectively and ecologically - amidst loss. It began as a personal reflection on the process of memory formation between myself and the site. It resultantly unfolded as a virtual reality soundwalk experience. Participants navigate through a LiDAR scan of the receded seabed while listening to juxtaposed temporal moments and field recordings from a trip along the Jordan River to the Dead Sea. Most recorded sounds of water were of small streams from the Jordan river. A photogrammetric scan of the St. John Baptist Church invites further contemplation on memory preservation through the built environment. Ultimately, using such methods raises questions about how we remember, through simulative technologies, what is being 'lost.'
Memory of a Shrinking, Sinking, Living-Dead Sea was exhibited at InterAccess as part of Vector Festival's flagship exhibition, too fragile to hold, curated by Miriam Arbus.
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