Rehydrate, Re-Radio, and Re-Decolonize: Filming and Bridging Beneath and Beyond the Surface of Water Between Arctic and Pacific

Application summary

From the China–U.S. chip war encircling Taiwan to on-going global militarization, the securitization narrative is closely tied to emergency policies, sustainability transition, ongoing colonial-environmental legacies, and plays a critical role in shaping autonomy. The current eco-psycho-social urgency raises questions of the public spheres, on what Joanna Zylinska describes as “water literacy” in re-thinking water as a medium and a milieu of expanded entanglement (Zylinska, 2021). How do spirits of water carry securitization decisions across environments, states, and time? How does water absorb the extended materiality of technology and the immateriality of political climates? And how do our social, public, and ecological spheres interact with this watery information? The project will explore—through participatory filmmaking embedded in radio-based public education programs—the entangled layers of non-local phenomena such as artificially introduced salmon in the Arctic, severed subsea cable connections, and underwater technological ruins. Through these immersions, the project seeks to rehydrate, re-radio, and re-decolonize techno-national narratives in meeting a shifting paradigm toward sustainable transition. The three year doctoral research project, highlighting research-art collaboration with the LungA Radio School, the Arctic Sustainable Arts And Design Network in University of Arctic, includes the production of the feature length film The Chipped Sphere, Voided Space, Seeing Through Cleaned Water Is Connection, and the hydrofeminist situated, radio-based pilot program Maid Out Of Ice. The productions target shifts in securitization narratives in relation to the sustainability crisis, and serve as laboratories for experimentation and bases for article-based doctoral dissertation. The dissemination plan involves the publication of research articles, public education programs, screening events, and presentation of research findings at international conferences.