Armin Linke

Armin Linke

Prospecting Ocean, 2018

Installation consisting of main film (two-channel video installation, color, sound) and lectures (two-channel video installation, color, sound)
56 min (film)
240 min (lectures)
Overall dimensions variable
Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy

TBA21 Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary Collection


Working through photography and filmmaking, Armin Linke looks at the institutional infrastructures, decision processes, and sites of power hierarchies, in many cases through an investigation of the archive and of the conditions and possibilities of the media itself.

Prospecting Ocean attempts to create a new visualization to frame the complex kaleidoscopic images that are connected with the Anthropocene into a linear narrative essay. The work aims at understanding and possibly creating new solutions to design the future. Exemplary issues are the acidification of the ocean, the implication of the usage of fertilizers, the practice of ice drilling to get information on the history of climate, ocean current measurement and modeling, negotiations on new legislations that relate to the ocean boundaries and regulations, and eventually economical practices like oil and mineral drilling, fisheries, issues related to vessel transport, and ice melting in the Arctic region.

Armin Linke investigates international regulations and laws related to the seabed and the rising sea levels. By combining film, photography, documentation, and interviews, he has selected various institutions, scientists and local agents, observing the different procedures, negotiations, interconnections that their activities implicate. Focusing on a selection of seminal conferences, Linke uses a combination of filmic material gathered, amongst other, from the 22nd Session of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, as well as Committee on International Law and Sea Level Rise, Johannesburg/Sandton, South Africa. The documentation of the conferences will be combined with footage gathered in the field on various research trips investigating similar themes, which feed back into these conferences.

Camera: Armin Linke, Giulia Bruno
Sound and sound postproduction: Giuseppe Ielasi, Renato Rinaldi 
Editing: Giulia Bruno, Giuseppe Ielasi