midnight zone

Highlanes Municipal Gallery

October 14th - November 18th 2023

Highly surveilled and persistently unknowable, extraordinarily biodiverse and increasingly precarious, the deep ocean is a space of paradoxes. midnight zone responds to industrial and scientific practices that are transforming our relationships with the ocean, from the extraction of the seabed through deep sea mining, to research into the effects of climate change on deep-water corals. Drawing on O’Brien’s time on two marine expeditions in the Atlantic Ocean, and archives of Irish scientific work that has sought to map, understand, and vision these ecosystems, the exhibition brings together a range of media, including sound and visual installations, and decommissioned materials. midnight zone examines and attempts to reorient extractive imaginaries of ocean ecosystems, and attunes to networked oceanic knowledges and communities – and their unfathomable elements – amongst the unfolding of climatological emergency.

midnight zone was developed through a UCD Parity Studios Artist Residency with iCRAG and supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Kildare County Council.