36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea
Community Day

Join us for a day of film screenings of Sarah Cameron Sunde’s durational performances along with community crafts and participatory walks centered around the video artworks, drawing awareness to water, time and rising sea levels. Full schedule is below.

Pictured above: 36.5 / Bay of All Saints, Salvador Brazil.

FILM SCREENINGS:

On Saturday, August 13 two video works, 36.5 / Te Manukanukatanga ō Hoturoa, Aotearoa-New Zealand and 36.5 / Bay of All Saints, Salvador, Brazil, will play simultaneously in a four-channel installation outside on the waterfront from 8:08 AM – 8:31 PM, a duration that relates to the timing and length of the full tidal cycle in Aotearoa on May 16, 2022, the day that work was created.

Each video work is part of the series, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, in which the artist created nine site-specific performances and video artworks that engage the public in conversations about deep time and sea-level rise.

For the project, Sarah Cameron Sunde stands in a tidal bay for the full tidal cycle (12-13 hours) as water engulfs her body and then reveals it again. She partners with local organizations and invites the public to participate by standing in the water with her and by marking each passing hour from the shore. These works have been created with hundreds of people in communities around the world: Maine, Mexico, San Francisco, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, and Aotearoa-New Zealand.

GUIDED ACTIVITIES:

Community Craft: Denim Seascape Creation
10:00 AM – 1:00 PM and 3:00 – 6:00 PM
This activity is accessible for participants of all ages.

Using eco-responsible art practices and inspired by Sunde’s durational performances in Aotearoa and Brazil, members of the community are invited to collaborate on an evolving on-site installation that speaks to our relationship with the sea, locally and globally.

The activity will be led by René Stewart-Pearce / MARZ ÁNAY, and mixed media visual artist Pamella Allen, using recycled/repurposed denim and cotton fabric. The community-created, resulting oceanic landscape will also serve as audience seating for the culmination of the 36.5 series, 36.5 / New York Estuary, which will be livestreamed at Brookfield Place on Wednesday, September 14th.

Participatory Walk: 36.5 “Human Clock”
Gather at the screens at 10:00 AM, 4:00 PM and 8:00 PM

Throughout the tidal cycle, Sunde will mark the passing of each hour with regular trips to the water’s edge. The public is invited to join the “human clock” walks during high-tide (10:08am), low-tide (4:08pm), and sunset/end of the cycle (8:08pm).

About the Human Clock: While planning 36.5 / San Francisco Bay, Sarah brought in movement and media artist Sasha Petrenko and together they created a physical vocabulary to mark the passing of the hours — which is now used and modified in all subsequent 36.5 works. Based on nautical hand signals, the 6 minute phrase is performed on the hour for the duration of Sunde’s performance. The public is invited to learn the phrase, thus providing space for them to communicate the time somatically through a collective act of presence.

COMPLETE SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

8:08 AM – 8:31 PM
Screening of 36.5 / Te Manukanukatanga ō Hoturoa, Aotearoa-New Zealand and 36.5 / Bay of All Saints, Salvador, Brazil.

10:08 AM
Participatory Walk: 36.5 “Human Clock”
*Gather at the screens at 10:00 AM

10:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Community Craft: Denim Seascape Creation

3:00 – 6:00 PM
Community Craft: Denim Seascape Creation

4:08 PM
Participatory Walk: 36.5 “Human Clock”
*Gather at the screens at 4:00 PM

8:08 PM
Participatory Walk: 36.5 “Human Clock”
*Gather at the screens at 8:00 PM

SCREENING CREDITS:

36.5 / Te Manukanukatanga ō Hoturoa, Aotearoa-New Zealand

2020-2022

Live participatory performance + HD durational video artwork with sound

12 hours, 23 minutes, 8th work in the series

Collaborators: Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery, Auckland University of Technology, Nettie Normal, Amiria Puia-Taylor, Kingi Peterson, Diane Blomfield, Mairi Gunn and Fergus Milner (video), HIWA and Joshua Dumas (music).

In Aotearoa, Sunde’s Māori collaborators, Amiria and Kingi, stood with her for the full tidal cycle as guides to this body of water, which has been neglected by the government. Nettie led HIWA in kapa haka performances to mark the passing of each hour culminating in a haka powhiri to bring us home at the end.

36.5 / Bay of All Saints, Salvador, Brazil

2019

Live participatory performance + HD Durational video artwork with sound

12 hours, 16 minutes, 6th work in the series

Collaborators: Solar do Unhão Community, MUSAS, Museu de Arte Moderna Bahía (MAM) and Adriana Campelo, Chief Resilience Officer for the City of Salvador, Clara Domingas, Pretxs de Rua (Black Poets of the Street), Cristiano Gobbi, Babette Pendleton, Vinicius de Jesus Sapucaia, Paulo Barbosa, Guilherme Burgos (video), and Joshua Dumas (music)

In Brazil, Sunde collaborated closely with artist-anthropologist Clara Domingas whose ancestors are Indigneous to the area and the group Pretxs de Rua (Black Poets of the Street) who performed the poetry of resistance every hour, considering the parallels between the struggle to survive on a daily basis and the struggles for humanity to survive in the face of the climate crisis.

The ninth and final work in the 36.5 series will premiere on September 14, 2022 in Lenapehoking (Queens, New York.)

More details on the September 14th event can be found here.

SARAH CAMERON SUNDE is an interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video, and public art, investigating scale and duration in relationship to the human body, the environment, and deep time. She was recently awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete her ongoing series, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (2013 – present). Other honors include two MAP Fund Grants, Watermill Center Residency, Baryshnikov Residency, Princess Grace Award, and ongoing support from Invoking the Pause. Solo exhibitions include The Georgia Museum of Art (Athens, GA), NYU Gallatin Galleries (New York, NY), Oude Kerk (Amsterdam), and Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery (Tamaki Makaurau-Auckland). She holds a B.A. in Theater from UCLA and an M.F.A. in Digital and Interdisciplinary Art Practice from The City College of New York, CUNY.