RESORT
ANDREW ELLIS JOHNSON AND SUSANNE SLAVICK, HD VIDEO, 5:38 loop
Excerpt: https://vimeo.com/195354478
Full video: https://vimeo.com/195349256 (Contact artist for password)
The boundless sea lulls and mesmerizes patrons of seaside resorts. The open sea, however, is a last resort for migrants and refugees. For them, the comforts of home have been replaced by perils. For them, the sea offers neither pleasure nor leisure. It is an unpredictable and dangerous expanse toward shores that may welcome or repel. So far, over 3700 refugees and migrants have died this year while crossing the Mediterranean.
In Resort, the immensity of the sea is oddly stilled. There is no lull in the light that cycles from dawn to dusk across a sandy stage. The bodies that lounge on beach chairs are absent, unavailable or unwilling to assist those bodies that are anxious, vulnerable and desperate, bodies forced to abandon all that was once familiar and stable, bodies that may sink and be subsumed. The chairs are turned away from the sea, avoiding those heaved on its waves. Still, roiling waters churn across the empty seats. The turmoil is both private and collective, severed into the single frames of each seat and flowing continuously across the row. The invisible surges into visibility. The crisis is not at bay.