This exhibition is part of the inquiry On Becoming Earthlings, initiated in 2015 in the frame of the Climate change conference (COP21).1
Wind tugging at my sleeve
feet sinking into sand
I stand at the edge where earth touches ocean
where the two overlap
a gentle coming together
at other times and places a violent clash.
–Gloria Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 1987
The shoreline is an unusual kind of boundary. Whereas most boundaries enforce separation, it is a
threshold marked by contact and negotiation, change and instability. It is a place of arrivals and
departures, of safe harbours and hostile intrusions. At once embedded in local traditions and subject
to industrial development, it is a site of encounter between different populations and environments.
In the case of marine shorelines, the intertidal zone – exposed to the air at low tide and immersed in
water at high tide – is an in-between realm of intermittent transformation, containing a high
diversity of species that have found ways to survive together within the challenging flux of the
ecosystem. As the planet heats up and water levels rise, the shoreline is among the places where our
vulnerability to climate emergency is made most manifest.2
Shoreline Movements is a film program that approaches the threshold between land and water as a
material environment and as a provocative metaphor for the uncertainties and conflicts of worldly
existence. By attending to the shifting frontier of the shoreline and the organisms that inhabit it, we
can learn to think ecologically, which means understanding the fluid relations that exist between a
vast array of agents, to the point that presumed separations between them are put into question.
Sometimes these relations are harmonious, but they can equally be characterized by discord and
violence; the shoreline is where seemingly irreconcilable worlds confront one another in
negotiations without end. 3
Across eighteen works of cinematic non-fiction made between 1944 and 2020, Shoreline Movements
explores how artists and filmmakers have addressed the manifold encounters that take place in the
littoral zone, broaching issues of environmental crisis, indigeneity, coloniality, community, and
otherness. Presented within a space designed by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, across six cycles that
come and go like the tides, these films search for ways to render sensible the particularity and
complexity of reality, embracing filmic and verbal language as nontransparent mediators that aid in
this task. Through a wide range of strategies – from observation and the interview to speculative
fiction and the essay form – they confront the difficulty and the desirability of building a shared
world when deep divisions and power asymmetries everywhere prevail. In the aftermath of harm
and loss, they imagine possibilities of repair and resurgence.
PROGRAM
Movement 1
(21 November - 06 December 2020)4
Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Black Beach / Forces / The Dead / Camp, 2016, 8:00
Tsuchimoto Noriaki, The Shiranui Sea (Shiranuikai), 1975, 153:00
Karimah Ashadu, Lagos Island, 2012, 4:44
Movement 2
(07 December - 27 December 2020)5
Thao Nguyen Phan, Becoming Alluvium, 2019, 16:52
Sky Hopinka, maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore, 2020, 82:00
Maya Deren, At Land, 1944, 15:00
Movement 3
(28 December 2020 - 17 January 2021)6
Edith Dekyndt, Dead Sea Drawings (Part 1), 2010, 4:40
Joshua Bonnetta, The Two Sights, 2019, 90:00
Rebecca Meyers, blue mantle, 2010, 34:00
Movement 4
(18 January - 07 February 2021)7
Carlos Motta, Nefandus, 2013, 13:00
Hu Tai-li, Voices of Orchid Island, 1993, 73:00
Patricio Guzmán, The Pearl Button (El botón de nácar), 2015, 82:00
Movement 5
(08 February - 21 February 2021)8
Jessica Sarah Rinland, Y Berá – Bright Waters, 2016, 9:37
Ben Rivers, Slow Action, 2011, 45:00
Johan van der Keuken, Flat Jungle (De platte jungle), 1978, 90:00
Movement 6
(22 February - 14 March 2021)9
Peggy Ahwesh, The Blackest Sea, 2016, 9:30
Francisco Rodriguez, A Moon Made of Iron (Una luna de hierro), 2017, 29:00
Zhou Tao, The Worldly Cave, 2017, 47:53
A project by
- Council
Curated by
- Erika Balsom
- Grégory Castéra
Spatial design by
- Daniel Steegmann Mangrané
Films by
- Peggy Ahwesh
- Karimah Ashadu
- Joshua Bonnetta
- Edith Dekyndt
- Maya Deren
- Patricio Guzmán
- Sky Hopinka
- Hu Tai-li
- Johan van der Keuken
- Rebecca Meyers
- Carlos Motta
- Beatriz Santiago Muñoz
- Thao Nguyen Phan
- Jessica Sarah Rinland
- Ben Rivers
- Francisco Rodriguez
- Tsuchimoto Noriaki
- Zhou Tao
Poster design by
- Lu Liang
Assistant
- Yundi Wang
Cover and top image: film stills from Thao Nguyen Phan, Becoming Alluvium, 2019-ongoing, single-channel colour video, 16 mins, 50 seconds, courtesy the artist
On the occasion of
- Taipei Biennial 2020
- curated by Bruno Latour and Martin Guinard
On becoming earthlings is Supported by
- Carasso Foundation
Council is supported by
- Foundation for Arts Initiatives








