Vertigo Sea<\/em> and Typhoon Coming On<\/em> proceed from a critical rereading of the \u201ccolonial sublime.\u201d Highlighted in the works of Friedrich and Turner, the colonial sublime presents a sea that can express both the spiritual contemplation of an immense space perceived to be empty and the exceptional isolated event, while supporting the reification of colonial ideals. Akomfrah\u2019s and Perry\u2019s works are at odds with this representation of water, proposing instead an \u201caquatic sublime\u201d: a complex, aqueous landscape full of contradictions where colonial violence, forced and drowning migration, and the extinction of non-human species are intertwined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Critique of Judgement<\/em>, Immanuel Kant, a beacon of the Enlightenment, describes the sublime as a sense of wonder, powerlessness, and admiration similar to the vertigo that one might feel when standing before a majestic landscape.2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 2 <\/a> - Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement<\/em>, trans. James Creed Meredith, ed. Nicholas Walker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 100.<\/span> According to the German Romanticism scholar Laure Cahen-Maurel, the quintessential subject of artists wishing to visually represent the Kantian sublime is \u201cthe unlimited and unbounded sea,\u201d3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 3 <\/a> - Laure Cahen-Maurel, \u201cThe Simplicity of the Sublime: A New Picturing of Nature in Caspar David Friedrich,\u201d in The Relevance of Romanticism: Essays on German Romantic Philosophy<\/em>, ed. Dalia Nassar (New York: Oxford University Press), 194.<\/span> such as in Friedrich\u2019s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog<\/em>. Perched on a rocky outcrop and viewed from the back, the painting\u2019s protagonist contemplates the immensity and infinite emptiness of the sea of clouds before him. This atmospheric sea is calm, passive, open to conquest, and devoid of agency; in addition, it is reduced to its quality as mirror, a simple reflection of the traveller\u2019s spiritual interiority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In contrast, the sublime of the Irish Romantic philosopher Edmund Burke evokes the notion of visceral terror, and this is the sublime that inspired all of Turner\u2019s paintings.4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 4 <\/a> - Andrew Wilton, Turner and the Sublime<\/em> (London: British Museum Publications, 1980), 65.<\/span> In The Slave Ship<\/em>, the water is tumultuous and indistinguishable from the sky. Here and there, we can glimpse shackled hands and feet emerging from the stormy sea. The represented scene is of the massacre of the British ship the Zong<\/em>, from which more than 130 enslaved Africans were thrown overboard because the ship owners hoped to claim insurance for damaged \u201ccargo.\u201d5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 5 <\/a> - It is important to note that the exact number of people who died is still debated today. The number varies between 123 and 150, depending on the source. Michelle Faubert, Granville Sharp\u2019s Uncovered Letter and the <\/em>Zong Massacre<\/em> (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 18\u200a\u2013\u200a19.<\/span> As the Romantic literature scholar Michelle Faubert emphasizes, \u201cthe Africans were literally worth more dead than alive.\u201d6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 6 <\/a> - Faubert, Granville Sharp<\/em>\u2019s Uncovered Letter<\/em>, 20.<\/span> <\/p>\n\n\n\n In his depiction, Turner takes the liberty of dramatizing the circumstances of the event by situating it in a storm; in so doing, he exploits the massacre and at the same time objectifies the represented bodies. Yet the Zong<\/em> massacre is more than just an isolated tragedy: it speaks to the dehumanization of enslaved Africans condemned to forced migration.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n By embodying Burke\u2019s sublime, Turner offers a dramatic rereading of the events that diverts from the actual drama being played out in the scene: colonialism in all its violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This tendency to idealize a landscape encourages both conquest and the dramatization of tragedies that attest to the systemic violence and success of the colonial enterprise. It turns out that the aquatic scape or the allusion to it serves as a pictorial vehicle for imperialist ideologies. For Friedrich and Turner, water is the material used to formally explore Kant\u2019s and Burke\u2019s sublimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Vertigo Sea<\/em>, the allusion to Friedrich is obvious. Akomfrah takes up the formal composition of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog<\/em> and represents a Black man dressed in the red coat worn by the British army in colonial times. His protagonist stands in front of calm waters, surrounded by mountains with cloud-covered peaks, and he faces us rather than turning his back to us, as Friedrich\u2019s traveller does. He seems solemn and thoughtful; he is looking at the ground, hands joined, in a posture of contemplation. The man being represented is Olaudah Equiano (c. 1745\u200a\u2013\u200a1797), a formerly enslaved person who fought for the abolition of slavery and became known for denouncing the treatment of Black people, particularly by drawing attention to the Zong<\/em> massacre trial.7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 7 <\/a> - The trial began in March 1783, after the insurers refused to pay compensation to the owners of the Zong<\/em> for the loss of the enslaved Africans. There was a subsequent appeal, but no crew member was ever charged despite the trial\u2019s effect on public opinion.<\/span> By turning his back on the majestic landscape behind him, Akomfrah\u2019s Equiano rejects the Kantian sublime, rejects the colonized landscape of the imperialist imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than a simple negation of the colonial sublime, Akomfrah\u2019s framing points to a reading of water as ruin, as requiem. The author Jakob Nilsson describes Vertigo Sea<\/em> as \u201crescuing from a \u2018space of amnesia\u2019 the victims of this crisis into an artistic space.\u201d8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 8 <\/a> - Jakob Nilsson, \u201cCapitalocene, Clich\u00e9s, and Critical Re-Enchantment: What Akomfrah\u2019s Vertigo Sea<\/em> Does through BBC Nature,\u201d Journal of Aesthetics & Culture<\/em> 10, no. 1 (2018): 1, accessible online.<\/span> This operation is done through what Akomfrah calls \u201coblique tales on the aquatic sublime.\u201d His exploration of the sublime draws its source from the words of the American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote, \u201cBe not the slave of your own past \u2026 plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep, and swim far, so you shall come back with new self-respect, with new power, and with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.\u201d9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 9 <\/a> - Excerpt by Ralph Waldo Emerson quoted in Vertigo Sea<\/em>.<\/span> Akomfrah\u2019s work plunges us into deep and troubled waters. He assembles staged scenes\u200a\u2014\u200alike the one of Equiano\u200a\u2014\u200aBBC images, and archival footage that mix trafficking of enslaved persons, whale hunts, makeshift rafts of migrants seeking a better life, and excessive industrial fishing. The montage of images allows a symbolic connection and makes possible a layered reading of history through the motif of water; thinking through water means thinking without distinction of past, present, and future colonial violence. Akomfrah shows us that the mercantile logic underlying the trafficking of enslaved people is the same as the one enabling the exploitation of the marine environment: in both cases, the Other is reduced to the status of commodity. Vertigo Sea<\/em> exposes the almost intolerable entanglement of oblique tales that coexist beyond the shared temporality of an artwork.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perry also takes part in this \u201crescuing from a space of amnesia\u201d by offering an aquatic sublime. She is mindful to remove the fragments of bodies that can be seen in Turner\u2019s Slave Ship<\/em> and chooses to represent a calm rather than a stormy sea. Among other things, these two manipulations refocus our attention on the long history of colonial and post-colonial violence, such as the Zong<\/em> massacre. With care and tenderness, Perry reactivates this event and integrates it into our contemporary history. By subverting Turner\u2019s graphic representation, she consciously distances herself from a sensationalism that could reawaken the trauma caused by the violence inflicted on Black bodies for the descendants of enslaved people and, more generally, for Black people. At the same time, she returns agency to those who perished at the hands of the Zong<\/em>\u2019s crew. Although most of the enslaved Africans were thrown in the water by the crew, some jumped in willingly, and Perry makes sure to remind us of this. The clarification enables us to perceive these trafficked people not as victims but as persons in their own right. In The Racial Contract<\/em>, the philosopher Charles W. Mills reminds us that Kant is first and foremost \u201cthe foundational theorist in the modern period of the division between <\/em>Herrenvolk and <\/em>Untermenschen, persons and subpersons<\/em>.\u201d10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 10 <\/a> - Charles W. Mills, The Racial Contract<\/em> (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 72 (emphasis in original).<\/span> By offering the public a new take on the Zong<\/em> massacre through an aquatic sublime, Perry creates a space of respect that gives dignity to enslaved persons. She makes this reversal with subtlety. In Blender, the software she uses to transform Turner\u2019s water, the violet colour indicates that a texture is missing. She makes use of this feature, emphasizing the error messages to evoke loss and invisibilization. The effect of the violet\u2019s omnipresence in Typhoon Coming On<\/em> highlights the removal of Black bodies from the Western grand narrative. Their absence is striking, and Perry\u2019s insistence on this omission, this lacuna, is an act of resistance and liberation, which, as with Akomfrah, encourages us to relook at our history with a critical eye.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n Although Perry is careful to erase the bodies from Turner\u2019s work, the entire installation breathes their presence while eschewing their identification as commodity or victim. The bodies are no longer transferred by water but move with it. The surface of water and skin merges and extends into the gallery space to engulf the visitors\u2019 bodies. Water no longer stands as an immaterial and infinite mass to be conquered; it is no longer empty and without agency but instead acts as a guardian of the memories held in the presences and well-kept secrets of colonial history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of the time, we see water as a natural and geopolitical border between continents. However, as a binding agent, could the ocean lead to a reformulation of our relationship to water that would be based more in redress, the assumption of responsibility, and care? Such attention could be paid to those who undertake perilous crossings, whether forced or not, but also to the more-than-human worlds that inhabit these waters. With a care similar to Perry\u2019s in her rereading of the Zong <\/em>massacre, Akomfrah reorganizes the BBC footage to create a narrative that maintains the degree of complexity inherent in water and the violence it encompasses, yet also avoids reductive shortcuts that could arouse trauma. Ironically, the Dutch word zorg<\/em>, which became zong <\/em>when the British took possession of the ship, means \u201ccare.\u201d11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> 11 <\/a> - Faubert, Granville Sharp<\/em>\u2019s Uncovered Letter<\/em>, 14.<\/span> Vertigo Sea<\/em> and Typhoon Coming On<\/em> answer the imperative to reject our romanticized relationship with water; the overturn of the colonial sublime in favour of an aquatic sublime is a first step in this direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Translated from the French by Oana Avasilichioaei<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A PhD student in research-creation at Concordia University, Ch\u00e9lanie Beaudin-Quintin creates films in which she explores the individual and collective body through the intersection of dance, cinema, and anthropology. She is currently making Underwater<\/em>, a virtual reality aquatic dance-film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently pursuing a PhD in humanities at Concordia University, Jo\u00eblle Dub\u00e9 is researching the intersectional temporalities of intergenerational (in)justices and contemporary art. Positing relationality at the centre of her theoretical preoccupations, she investigates ways of rearticulating the relationship between the currently living and life-to-come.<\/p>\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_DubeBeaudin-Quintin_Sondra-Perry_Typhooncomingon_Serpentine_DSC5217.jpg\")
Sondra Perry<\/strong>
Typhoon Coming On<\/em>, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, 2018.
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio, courtesy of the artist & Bridget Donahue, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nFriedrich and Turner: Mobilizing a Colonial Sublime<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Akomfrah and Perry: Oblique Tales of an Aquatic Sublime<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
![\"John-Akomfrah-Vertigo-Sea\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_DubeBeaudin-Cantin_John-Akomfrah_VertigoSea_40763-3508.jpg\")
John Akomfrah<\/strong>
Vertigo Sea<\/em>, cvideo still, 2015.
\u00a9 Smoking Dogs Films, DACS \/ Artimage (2023)
Photo: courtesy of Smoking Dogs Films & Lisson Gallery, Los Angeles<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n![\"Sondra-Perry-Typhoon-coming-on\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_DubeBeaudin-Quintin_Sondra-Perry_Typhooncomingon_Miami_36.jpg\")
Sondra Perry<\/strong>
Typhoon Coming On<\/em>, installation view, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, 2018.
Photo: Mike Din, courtesy of the artist & Bridget Donahue, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/esse.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/109_DO_DubeBeaudin-Quintin_Sondra-Perry_Typhooncomingon_Serpentine_DSC5346.jpg\")
Sondra Perry<\/strong>
Typhoon Coming On<\/em>, installation view, Serpentine North Gallery, Londres, 2018.
Photo: Fredrik Nilsen Studio, courtesy of the artist & Bridget Donahue, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n