accounts of immersion Six-channel HD + low-res video, audio 2023

In 1973, Dr John Wilson and pilot George Colquhoun pioneered the first ever dive in search of deep-water coral off the west coast of Ireland. The dive took place onboard the Pisces III submersible, which later the same year became the focus of the longest and deepest underwater rescue in history when it became detached from its mother ship whilst laying transatlantic telephone cable. accounts of immersion combines appropriated VCR footage of Wilson and Colquhoun’s dive with the artist’s own footage of contemporary processes of remotely videoing, collecting and sampling deep-water coral specimens in the same location. Considering dis/continuous histories of scientific exploration and visions of a changing ocean floor, the work traces violences in processes of observation and extraction, but also the emergence of deep-ocean corals as sentient communities and precarious nodes in global oceanic networks in the context of the climate emergency.

Kindly supported by an Arts Council of Ireland, UCD Parity Studios and iCRAG.