The Sea is History

  • August 5, 2017 / 15:00

Director: Louis Henderson
France; 2016, 28’; color;English; Turkish subtitles

The Sea is History, made in the Dominican Republic and Haiti, is a free adaptation of the poem by Derek Walcott. The film is a materialist and animist critique of the monumentalization of European colonial history, reading the past instead as something intimately entangled within the present — as a living and mutational thing made up of the living and the dead. It is in this sense that the film suggests a way beyond the boundary event that could be called the Plantationocene (brought on with the onset of modernity and the system of globalized capitalism that started with the colonization of the Americas in 1492, with Columbus arriving in Ayiti; latter day Dominican Republic) — and towards a possible "Chthulucenic" future of créolised assemblages as a politics of re-narrativising death within life. Made in Santo Domingo - the first capital of the New World, and on Lago Enriquillo - a hyper-salinated lake, once part of the Caribbean Sea, that is flooding the border with Haiti due to the drastic rise in sea temperatures that are currently deeply affecting the global ocean.

The Story of Milk and Honey

The Story of Milk and Honey

The Sea is History

The Sea is History

Shanghaied Text

Shanghaied Text

Sans Soleil

Sans Soleil

For the Blinds

For the Blinds

Trailer

The Sea is History

I Copy Therefore I Am

I Copy Therefore I Am

Suggesting alternative models for new social and economic systems, SUPERFLEX works appear before us as energy systems, beverages, sculptures, copies, hypnosis sessions, infrastructure, paintings, plant nurseries, contracts, or specifically designed public spaces.

Turquerie

Turquerie

Having penetrated the Balkans in the fourteenth century, conquered Constantinople in the fifteenth, and reached the gates of Vienna in the sixteenth, the Ottoman Empire long struck fear into European hearts. 

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

The Ottoman Way of Serving Coffee

Coffee was served with much splendor at the harems of the Ottoman palace and mansions. First, sweets (usually jam) was served on silverware, followed by coffee serving. The coffee jug would be placed in a sitil (brazier), which had three chains on its sides for carrying, had cinders in the middle, and was made of tombac, silver or brass. The sitil had a satin or silk cover embroidered with silver thread, tinsel, sequin or even pearls and diamonds.