Bodies as Border: Traces and Flows of Connection (adapted for Urban Screen, Surrey, BC) 31:56 min. generative video with sound

Body as Border: Traces and Flows of Connection is an immersive, large-scale generative video projection created specifically for the Urban Screen at Surrey Art Gallery in response to the global crisis of covid-19, and, how it draws attention to the idea of the Body as Border.

Much as borders represent the ways that state powers assert control and sovereignty over territories by defining the relations between ‘us and them,’ so too the human body, in the context of the pandemic, has become an object of state and bio- capitalist interest, and fear and division has resulted as a consequence. Within this context, the connections between the macrocosm of global politics and the smallest of all microbes, the virus, are played out in the borderland of the human body. In this way, the body becomes both a statistic and a borderland space for the meeting of macro and micro.

The artwork was created over 3 months with the intent of generating expressions that seek to unite, rather than divide. We ground this exploration through our reference to some of the histories of Surrey, situated on the Fraser River and adjacent to New Westminster, one of the first sites that British settlers colonized in the mid-1800’s. Using the water of the Fraser River as both a physical and metaphorical substance of connection between these local histories and our current global crisis, we tease out connections between the movements of those early settlers and our histories of migration to the region which are entangled and complicit with colonial and settler histories. We also reflect on the ways in which the covid-19 virus has colonized countless human bodies across the globe. Much like the pandemic reminds us that we are all connected, the water that we draw attention to acts as an agential carrier; part of the perpetual recycling of a system that sustains us all, carrying memories of the human and non-human bodies that it has travelled through.

The Body as Border, which we discuss in this artwork, is represented by both the autonomous human body, as a sovereign entity, and the body of water that flows down from the Rocky Mountains through the Fraser River, out to the Salish Sea and beyond. By bringing the concept of these two bodies together, we show how we are all united through flows of connection.

The project consists of gathering visual and sound sources from around the Fraser River, which will be mixed with images and videos from our personal archives. We will also develop a series of poetic stanzas as a response to the borders we’ve encountered, broken through or created as we migrated to this region as uninvited guests. In addition, we will also gather water and organic samples from the Fraser River as it flows through Surrey, and we will grow them in petri dishes. The growth of bacterial cultures will be audio-visually documented. The recorded sounds will be mixed with other gathered sounds to compose an original sound score that will be broadcasted through the existing outdoor speaker system. The recorded images will be mixed to create a linear video narrative that will then drive the creation of the generative immersive video projection.

CREDITS:

Concept and development: prOphecy sun, Freya Zinovieff, Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda and Steve DiPaola

AI (painting and poetry): Steve DiPaola

Video Editing: Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda

Soundscore: Freya Zinovieff and prOphecy Sun

Camera and Photography: Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Freya Zinovieff, prOphecy Sun and Getty Images.

Performance: Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Freya Zinovieff and prOphecy Sun