Paper short abstract:

Opportunities in the amphibious in-between of the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal, are manifold and always emergent. In this paper I trace an artistic-research practice seeking to mimetically inquire the deltaic ambivalence and emergence and to employ reassemblage to go beyond stable (mis)representation.

Paper long abstract:

Opportunities in the amphibious in-between of the Sine-Saloum Delta, Senegal, are manifold abd always emergent and require constant attunement and skillful improvisation by delta dwellers.

Tracing an artistic-research practice that seeks to mimetically inquire the deltaic ambivalence and emergence, in this paper, I will draw on three (collective) audiovisual works. Thereby, I will show how my practice with split-screen videos, audiovisual installations and collages/comics tries to intervene into and go beyond common stable (mis)representations of deltaic life and matter. Through the principle of reassemblage, frictions emerge between images or between images and sound or text and open up a space for sensuality, imagination and multivocality.

The split-screen video 'Deux Horizons' (2019/20) juxtaposes two minimally edited scenes from land and water. It follows the history of salinisation of matter and aquatisation of life and inquires two (initially) dichotomous social, semiotic or material horizons and their eventual interrelations, attunements and re-makings.

For the installation 'Bidonmondes' (2020), six audio-visual loops contrast global extractivism and its situated appropriations. It reconfigures on the one hand, the imagery and sound around re-uses of palm oil plastic canisters in the delta and on the other hand, the canisters' inherited sound such as logging or palm oil industry advertisement.

Finally, I will draw on ongoing work around photo collages and comic drawings in cooperation with Pamplumus, a Senegalese visual artist, and trace translations from text to drawing as well as the reassemblage of existing visual aspects of deltaic life via mixed media approaches.