When the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina disappeared 30,000 people the most notorious method was performed via secret ‘death flights’. Victims were drugged, stripped naked, and thrown from planes into the ocean so their bodies would never be found.
The ocean plays an important role in the inter-generational transfer of cultural history in my family. It marks the literal crossing from Argentina to Australia; it represents the symbolic liminality between two borders/countries/cultures that I experienced growing up as a second-generation migrant; and it has marked my body with a visceral effect of postmemory—a trans-generational transfer of memory as a result of trauma—through an inherited fear of the ocean.
In this performance, human body and body of water share the same weight. The slow dripping of seawater into the fish tank facilitates a re-performance of the falling bodies, while also providing contact between human and water bodies, and allowing for the possibility of reconciliation through exposure.
Through this ritual act, seawater holds complexity as the site of intimate transferal of memory, as the catalyst for decomposition, and as a marker of rebirth.
Action
Learning To Love The Ocean Again After Argentina, 1976 | Fish tank, manila rope, PVC vinyl, seawater | 6 hour durational solo performance | Scratch Art Space, Sydney (2018)
Photography: Isobel Markus-Dunworth
