Estelle Del­cam­bre, Marée haute. Photo © Rasa Alksnyte

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Ici Commence La Mer

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Estelle Del­cam­bre, Marée haute. Photo © Rasa Alksnyte
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A three-day season on the sea explores the poetics of submerged perspectives

In March 2024, les Brigittines theatre in Brussels hosted a three-day event of conferences, workshops, performances and lectures under the title Ici Commence La Mer (‘here begins the sea’). The phrase is from the opening lines of Victor Hugo’s novel Les Travailleurs de la Mer published in 1866. Not only does it signify the point where land ends and the sea begins, but it also captures the awe we feel when contemplating a vast expanse of water and the distant horizon beyond. The phrase is also often used as a metaphor for a quest into unknown territory, and, more recently, it’s been branded as a slogan to discourage littering.

The Brigittines’ idea was to immerse participants in the serious issues surrounding our impact on the sea and the life within it. The event was not about sounding an alarm bell but preferred to make poetics the ally of action. Described as a campaign of ‘sensibilisation’, the combination of each strand – political, educational, performative and practical – contributed to a dramaturgy intending to heighten our awareness of both the art and the problems being addressed.


The first part of the programme was dedicated to sharing concrete ideas as to how the cultural sector can transition effectively towards a more sustainable future. I was instantly struck by how many Brussels-based organisations have the issue at their core. From RAB/BKO, a platform for dialogue and a resource centre aiming to facilitate synergies between Brussels’ many cultural organisations, and its new initiative SAMENDURABLE, to EventChange that shares advice and tools to assist organisations to accelerate the reduction of their carbon footprint. In Limbo, Magazzino and Souplothèque, all platforms for swapping and recycling theatre sets and technical material in the socio-cultural sector were also featured. Even lunch was provided by Mazzette a ‘brewpub’ collective.

Just shedding light on these organisations, whose existence is unknown to many, is a fruitful exercise when one of the largest impediments to committed action appears to be overwhelm and bewilderment: knowing where to go for support and motivation, and putting a human face on an initiative, makes casual conversations more inclined to be followed through with practical plans and action.


Blue Quote Mark

The ocean can no longer be seen as some romantic European trope of the unlimited

Blue Quote Mark

The workshop was followed by a talk entitled ‘Ocean reflections: performing arts and decolonial ecology’ by Julia Schade, a postdoctoral researcher in media studies at the Ruhr University in Bochum. Aiming to readjust how we view the ocean today, and using examples from both visual and performance art, her talk scrutinises ‘colonialism in relation to the performing arts’ and how the ocean and its representations are evolving. ‘Recent reflections in the performing arts and postcolonial studies have made it abundantly clear that the ocean can no longer be seen as some romantic European trope of the unlimited.’


Perspectives on Turner’s The Slave Ship (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)

The first artwork she presents is William Turner’s masterpiece The Slave Ship, completed in 1840. It depicts the horrific outrage of 1781 when, short of drinking water, the captain of the British ship Zong orders that sick and dying enslaved Africans be thrown overboard in order that insurance for lost ‘cargo’ be claimed. In the painting, the plight of the drowning victims is discernible beneath the water. In revealing this atrocity, The Slave Ship was an early example of Bruno Latour’s ‘double fracture of modernity’: a mistrust in modernity spurred by discrepancies between values and facts. The painting served as powerful political commentary, and changed perspectives.

Schade follows with examples of other artworks where ‘the ocean appears as a repository of memory and trauma’. Selina Thompson’s performance Salt (UK, 2016) describes the sea as a ‘liquid tomb’, and John Akomfrah’s video installation Vertigo Sea (UK, 2015) demonstrates ‘decolonial ecology’, the term used today to describe the intersection of environmental and decolonial theory.

The exposé ends with the most explicit illustration of ‘submerged perspective’, where ‘voices are listened to that usually go unheard’: an extract of a documentary entitled Purple Sea by Syrian artist and filmmaker Amel Alzakout. Using an underwater GoPro camera, she films her harrowing experience of floating in the sea, waiting for rescue after her boat, supposedly sailing her to safety, sank. We see the murky water and hear the gurgling, garbled voices. The full documentary lasts 67 inscrutable minutes. We are compelled to ‘engage in the unsettling exercise of listening to drowning voices’, which Schade had previously described as the essence of engagement with decolonial ecology today.


Marée Haute, by Estelle Delcambre (trailer)

With the talk still fresh in our minds we move to the first floor for the performance Mareé Haute by Belgian choreographer Estelle Delcambre. When the lights suddenly snap on we see Delcambre standing naked against a pristine white backdrop that is also draped to cover the floor. Her feet are planted in a perfect circle of pitch-black paint. Little by little, with increasingly vigorous swirling gestures of her hands, she scoops up the paint and clothes herself in it. Her entire body, slick black and sculptural, begins to move: outstretched arms, twisting waist, feet still planted in the paint. At one point she shifts from painted to painter, slapping and sliding her body over the white backdrop, daubing it with black traces made by her own skin.

Previously I might have viewed her movement as abstract, and assumed connections to visual art (Yves Klein’s work for example), but in the context of Ici Commence La Mer I could discern personal and intimate, complex and collective experiences being traced before my eyes. In a filmed interview with Delcambre, I learned afterwards that her research was inspired by Les Memoires des corps, a book by therapist Myriam Brousse, whose work explores the deep-seated, cellular memory of our bodies, and how trauma can be transmitted from generation to generation. In other words, this apparently abstract work I now categorised as one made from what I’d learned a submerged perspective to be.


Out of the Blue, Silke Huysmans & Hannes Dereere

The last work of the evening was Out of the Blue, a performance/documentary/lecture by Silke Huysmans and Hannes Dereere – an inspired intertwining of poetics and politics. At the start, we learn that the two artists have been in contact with three ships anchored in the Pacific Ocean above the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, an area of over 4 million square kilometres below the sea between Mexico and Hawaii, over which the International Seabed Authority decides which countries and companies can conduct research into deep-sea mining. One of the ships was a dredger from the Belgian company DEME. Another was on a scientific mission researching the effects of mining on the flora and fauna of the deep seabed. The third ship was Greenpeace’s Rainbow Warrior.

Huysmans and Dereere sit at a long table with their backs to us; their laptops are open and they are staring at the eight giant screens on the wall of the back of the theatre. The set-up resembles the control room of an enormous vessel. Using their computer mouses, they simply slide images out of dossiers labelled ‘marine life’ or ‘sound’ or ‘seascapes’ on their laptops that can be seen by us on the big screens. Other dossiers are labelled ‘recordings’ and when their content is selected, we hear interviews the artists conducted with Kris, the CEO of DEME mining ship, Patricia the scientist, and Saskia from the Rainbow Warrior. ‘We desperately need to extract minerals from the yet unexplored seabed if we’re going to do away with fossil fuels,’ says Kris from DEME, with disconcertingly rationality and accompanied by soundtrack so soothing it’s easy to imagine he’s right.

There is no overt activism in Out of the Blue. Its force lies in laying out the ambiguities that are the reality of our world. The meticulous, seemingly spontaneous live-editing and the juxtaposing of the different media has a deeply disturbing effect. It demonstrates how our perspective – and therefore beliefs, opinions and very train of thought – can hinge on and be manipulated by the order we hear and the context within which we see things. Experiencing this multidimensional collage of the different agendas on board each of the ships, it’s easy to feel your moral compass being tampered with. I was riveted and horrified in equal measure.


Dorian Chavez in Sisypholia. Photo © Les Brigittines
Dorian Chavez in Sisypholia. Photo © Les Brigittines

The following day, Sisypholia, a work by Natasha Belova and Dorian Chavez where Greek myth is transposed into a modern-day chronicle, had dancer Chavez rolling a giant ball of mass-produced, cheap clothing around the neighbourhood next to the theatre. To the astonishment of onlookers, the ball sometimes knocked and rolled right over the dancer. It was a playful yet poignant commentary on the crushing weight of the runaway fat-ball that is the detritus of consumerism.

A final but crucial part of Ici Commence La Mer was a guided ‘game’ called Climate Fresk, devised by Cédric Ringenbach, an engineer and climate change specialist, whose pitch is: ‘Want to help tackle climate change but don’t have the time to become a climate scientist?’ It’s both an interactive game and a growing international community. The website gives explicit instructions as to how to join. In providing straight answers to complex questions through a simple tool that anyone can use, ‘play’ becomes empowering. I am already exploring the possibility of organising a Climate Fresk during the next Springback Assemmbly.

In setting the informative alongside the imaginative, and plotting a course through which we could navigate and reap maximum benefit from each experience, I felt the carefully curated programme of Ici Commence La Mer made it easier to confront some of the consequences of the climate crisis and grasp how they relate to and reflect in art. Although the now not-so-distant horizon looks grim, events like Ici Commence La Mer at least lay out the picture in an inspiring, multiform and therefore, I hope, more effective mode. ●


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Les Brigittines, Brussels, Belgium
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