That Oceanic Feeling - imagining a relational geography of the deep sea

The deep-ocean constitutes the largest, least understood environment on the planet, a space which refraction, lack of light and pressure make especially resistant to survey. That Oceanic Feeling explores our complex symbolic relationship to this emergent political and economic landscape through the lens of Oceanographic survey. This paper will take the form of an illustrated artist’s talk with accompanying screening of three artworks. It will consider the possibilities offered by artistic intervention within geo-physical practice/space (as distinct from collaborative co enquiry by artists and geographers or the use of creative methodologies by geographers) with reference to: 1) Truthing Gap - research (funded by the Leverhulme Trust), undertaken ‘in the field’ between 2008–10, by Rona Lee as Artist in Residence at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Southampton, (working alongside sonar geophysicists engaged in seabed mapping). 2) Its subsequent development, within the studio, into a body of work entitled That Oceanic Feeling (funded Arts Council England). http://www.hansardgallery.org.uk/exhibition/archive/2012/ronalee.html