Tidal Choreography

This film adopts an experimental approach to addressing the slow violence of climate change in tidal worlds. We swim and become-with the saltwater crocodile, a reptile that survived the last mass extinction event 66 million years ago. Our animated tidal choreography is sparked by images and stories across the Indian Ocean - the UNESCO heritage listed Sundarbans mangrove forest near Kolkata (India), and Larrakia country in Darwin (Northern Australia). As geographers and creative artists we are lured by kumir and dangalaba to entangle these tidal worlds and ‘unbuild’ violence in a geological era where man has emerged as a planetary force. Inspired by the relationship between indigenous peoples and their environments, this project explored the unique affordances of digital animation (including the fluidity of form and looping or repeated motion) in order to open a contemplative space for the viewer. As an image making medium, we found that animation can visually describe human imagination or comportment, and can potentially feed imagination and alter comportment. For these reasons we conclude that cross disciplinary collaborations between geographers and animators is a powerful strategy in the ongoing, and momentous, task of unbuilding multispecies violence in tidal (and other) worlds.