The Mariner’s Oubliette [film screening]

This was a screening of the film 'Mariner's Oubliette' by Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir & Mark Wilson from their original installation 'Matrix #1'. The 'Mariner’s Oubliette' was filmed in the North Slope Borough in Alaska, where human and other animal interests of many kinds intersect. With oil interests to the west and the conservation area to the east, such interests coalesce within a crucible of environmental contention. The whale is an important animal to the Inupiaq people, and skeletal remains can be found scattered around the town of Barrow (locally and officially known as Utqiagvik). For food, polar bears in the area depend on whaling carcasses left on the shore from Inupiag hunting trips. There is symbiosis between culture and nature – a sort of magic that this video work seeks to capture through an abstraction of imagery and sound. 'Oubliette’ is a word associated with forgetting. In mediaeval times, it signified a dungeon with the only entrance or exit being a trap door in the ceiling. Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson are a collaborative art duo. Their interdisciplinary art practice is research-based and socially engaged, exploring issues of history, culture, and environment in relation to both humans and non-human species. Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir is a professor of fine art at the Iceland University of the Arts, Reykjavík. Mark Wilson is a professor of fine art at the Institute of the Arts, University of Cumbria, UK.