championing progress in tackling the climate emergency by reinvigorating ocean life
introduction
INTO THE OCEANIC is an ambitious, immersive project from artists Elizabeth Ogilvie & Robert Page, involving two films: an artist’s documentary, both lyrical and analytical in form; and creative film installations created for large-scale projection. The documentary reveals investigation, experimentation, risk-taking and collaboration with world-class scientists; acting as an invaluable catalyst and educational tool for educators, curators, students and the public, revealing artists’ and scientists’ thinking and approach to art making as a conceptual journey, reflecting collectively, thinking ahead, reporting, questioning and sharing. During the ongoing collaboration the project will examine how artists and scientists can apply their skills to provide foresight and clarity in regard to the climate emergency, our relationship with the environment and our historical responsibility for what occurs in it.
This is an illuminating project engendering hope. It is a call to action and to collaborative public engagement. This is a long-term movement to inspire people who are contemporary witnesses of the state of the ocean worldwide and who will collect footage and data.
“The land (and ocean) retains an identity of its own still deeper and more subtle than we can know. Our obligation toward it then becomes simple: to approach with an uncalculating mind, with an attitude of regard. To try to sense the range and variety of its expression its weather and colours and animals. To intend from the beginning to preserve some of the mystery within it as a kind of wisdom to be experienced not questioned. And to be alert for its openings for that moment when something secret reveals itself within the mundane and you know the land and its ocean knows you are there.”
we are ocean @ COP26 & beyond
The WE ARE OCEAN Global Program (organised by ARTPORT_making waves and curated by Anne-Marie Melster) was a UN Ocean Decade Action endorsed by UNESCO which contributed a selection of projects to COP26 (2021), including INTO THE OCEANIC, with the intentions of sharpening public awareness about ocean protection and climate change in the context of international policy-making and triggering public participation by engaging young people, policy-makers and other stakeholders.
Partnering with Double Take Projections, Ogilvie & Page’s creative film was dramatically projected, enveloping whole building façades across Glasgow at a different location each night, launched at Glasgow Science Centre during COP26. By projecting the works outdoors, INTO THE OCEANIC brought local communities together to enter into a shared dialogue.
The project is ongoing, recently presented at the 2022 Venice Biennale of Art. Read more on the new dedicated webpage.
elizabeth ogilvie
Ogilvie is an environmental artist and academic creating experiences for her public. Her practice is a fusion of art, architecture and science; and water and ice are currently both medium and subject in the work. The experiential installations aim to expand perception/understanding of how our environment functions.
Her work seeks to point to issues at top of global agenda involving highlighting world’s most challenging problems, impact of climate change, threat to one of our most precious natural resources, most vital of all earthly compounds, water/ice, whose ebb/flow over time has helped form world we live in. She aims to create an experience of seeing, drawing people in through senses.
robert page
A keen environmental advocate in both work and life, Page is fascinated by the people he meets, the places he goes and the stories we all have to tell. He’s interested in the experiences that make us and shape us. His work is a fusion of documentary filmmaking and fine art, and has led him to encounter many different places, peoples and societies. Research trips to the far north alongside Ogilvie, exploring ground-zero of climate change, have seen an increasing focus on the climate emergency and how life in this extreme environment is changing. It is within thought-provoking cultures such as this that he has come to nurture his own creative processes. This new project sees Page using every tool at his disposal: documenting ocean life from high in the sky, to beneath the water’s surface.
brochure
WE ARE OCEAN + INTO THE OCEANIC
This PDF introduces our project | Also including [now closed] COP26 agenda
contact
“The landscape conveys an impression of absolute permanence. It is not hostile. It is simply there – untouched, silent and complete. It is very lonely, yet the absence of all human traces gives you the feeling you understand this land and can take your place in it.”
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@intotheoceanic