Deep Above 2015
Adam Chodzko
Single screen video with sound
28 mins
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NOTE: Low resolution reference copy; Please see Deep Above properly projected with a good quality sound system, somewhere. Thank you.
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Deep Above uses a distilled, intense combination of moving image and sound to explore, short-circuit and abstract our slippery self-deceptions regarding climate change among other looming crises. Adopting the languages of a tutorial in meditation, hypnosis and ‘self help’ Chodzko evolves an art work extracted from George Marshall's exceptional book Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change. Deep Above, suggests that the poetic, reflexive and critical structures of contemporary art itself might be capable of rewiring and subverting our deeply entrenched behaviour of ‘ignoring the elephant in the room’. The reason we can’t see it is that somehow we have ended up inside it.
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Deep Above continues Chodzko’s exploration into human behaviour, perception, cognition, and disavowal. Through a hyperbolic sci-fi proposition placing the understanding of contemporary art as the only solution to avert global environmental disaster from climate change, and proposing too, what might have to be done to art in order for this functionality to be catalysed, Deep Above presents itself as science fiction brain programming that becomes itself, and becomes us, as we watch it, in order to heal a “bad relationship.”
We know climate change is happening; we experience extreme weather conditions and observe the wealth of data, imagery and analysis as evidence, and ‘everyone’ seems to be talking about it. Yet, individually, we seem to have paralysed ourselves from taking immediate action to avoid the consequences of climate change. Deep Above uses a distilled, intense combination of moving image and sound to explore, short-circuit and abstract our slippery self-deceptions regarding climate change. Adopting the languages of a tutorial in meditation, hypnosis and ‘self help’ Chodzko evolves an art work developed from a series of approaches to the subject, including the work of psychoanalyst Sally Weintrobe, sociologist John Urry, theorist Brian Massumi and George Marshall’s book Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change.
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With thanks to:
Editor: Daniel Goddard
Voice: Gretchen Egolf and Rob Bateman
Family: Sophie, Howard, Mia and Elliot Sirota-Gott.
Boys: Clay, Seth, Felix, Rifqi, Victor, Joe, Callum
Extra voice: Chenxi Liu, Sariya Suwannakarn, José Fernandez Levy
Voice recording: Frank Walker
Steadicam: Simon Williams
Animation: Alex Wilson
Environmental footage: Greenpeace; Jane Castle, Emma Gibson and
Patrick Rouxel
Wolf footage: Wildwood Trust, Peter Smith.
Song: Cole Medina
University of Kent Chorus: Susan Wanless
Japan: Rina Nakano, Moemi Nagi, Keith Whittle, Beppu Project
‘Deep Above’ is commissioned by Invisible Dust.
Produced in association with Watershed and Shambala Festival.
Advised by Adam Harris, Experimental Psychologist, University College London, Sally Weintrobe psychoanalyst and Professor Paul Wilkinson, Environmental Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award.
Presented in partnership with Watershed as part of Festival of the Future City and Bristol European Green Capital.
Invisible Dust
Alice Sharp, Director and Curator
Johanne Hauge & Charlotte Young, Project Administrators
Simon Steven, Part PR Press Manager
Thanks to:
Madeleine Probst, Mark Cosgrove, Clare Reddington, Catrin John, Watershed
George Marshall, Author and founder of Climate Outreach
Emma Crouch, Bianca Manu, Georgia Bladon, Stephanie Wong, Isobel Tarr
Marcus Coates
Chris Johnson, Sid Sharma, Directors Shambala
Stephan Lewandowsky, University of Bristol
Rich Pancost, Cabot Institute, University of Bristol
Adam Corner, Climate Outreach
Ian Rimington, Arts Council England
Greer Roberts, Lily Rose Davies and Meroe Candy, Wellcome Trust
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