OPERATION SUNKEN SEA
2018 - ongoing
performance, multi-media installation
Operation Sunken Sea: Visual Research, Flower Bouquets, 2020
RELATED TEXTS
https://we-make-money-not-art.com/operation-sunken-sea
Furtado, Will. “Understanding the Contemporary Condition via Historical Megalomania”. Contemporary And, 8 Jan. 2020, https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/understanding-the-contemporary-condition-via-historical-megalomania/?fbclid=IwAR38POkMiFqLtqp-a6Tov3pmN5a14eZVJyTEb-uab5RHG7T2DwQYJ-BrLrA.
Senova, Basak (essay). “Flipping the History: A Collection of Notes and Quote Responses on Heba Amin’s Project Operation Sunken Sea”. di’van: A Journal of Accounts. Art | Culture | Theory. No 4, p. 54-62.
Njami, Simon (essay). “Chimera”. Kunstpreis Böttcherstraße Prize Bremen 2018,exhibition catalogue, 2018.
Operation Sunken Sea is an ongoing speculative, research-driven project borrowing the visual and rhetorical language of authoritarian regimes. The project exposes the political and ecological violence embedded within techno-utopian visions. Drawing on early twentieth-century European proposals to drain the Mediterranean and merge Africa and Europe into a single supercontinent, Amin revisits these geoengineering fantasies, such as the Atlantropa project, both as historical reference and as a site of disruption. Through acts of critical inversion, she reimagines these proposals from an Afro-Arab perspective, shifting the focus of power and authorship. This intervention extends into the realm of representation itself, most explicitly in works such as The Master’s Tools I—a restaging of a studio portrait of the architect behind the Atlantropa project—in which Amin replaces Herman Sörgel as the central protagonist. Across the project, the Mediterranean appears less as a stable body of water, but a geopolitical juncture to be drained, displaced and endlessly rewritten. By unsettling established cartographies, the work opens a space to question who holds the power to imagine, design, and claim the future and at what cost.
Operation Sunken Sea: Relocating the Mediterranean, Inaugural Speech, 2018, One channel video, 18'21'' Photo Documentation courtesy of Francesca Vella
Operation Sunken Sea: Relocating the Mediterranean, Inaugural Speech, 2018, One channel video, 18'21'', video still
Operation Sunken Sea Installation View, Malta. 2018. Valletta 2018, European Capital of Culture
Operation Sunken Sea Installation View, Malta. 2018. Valletta 2018, European Capital of Culture
Herman Sörgel in the office of the New York Times, n.d. ADM 92. Photo Deutsches Museum
The Master’s Tools I (restaging of Herman Sörgel’s portrait) 2018 B/W Archival Print, 80 x 110 cm
Portrait of Woman as Dictator I, Archival print, 80 by 63 cm, Berlin Biennale, photo courtesy of Tim Ohler
Operation Sunken Sea (the Anti-Control Room) - Video wall, 2018, 9 channel video, 37'05'', Berlin Biennale, photo courtesy of Tim Ohler
Operation Sunken Sea (the Anti-Control Room) - Video wall, 2018, 9 channel video, 37'05'', Berlin Biennale, photo courtesy of Tim Ohler
Operation Sunken Sea (the Anti-Control Room) - Video wall, 2018, 9 channel video, 37'05'', photo courtesy of Kristin Støylen
Operation Sunken Sea, 2020 Installation view, Mosaic Rooms (flag) Photo courtesy of Andy Stagg
Operation Sunken Sea, 2020 Installation view, Mosaic Rooms, Photo courtesy of Andy Stagg
Operation Sunken Sea, 2020 Installation view, Mosaic Rooms, Photo courtesy of Andy Stagg
Operation Sunken Sea, 2020 Installation view, Mosaic Rooms Photo courtesy of Andy Stagg
Visions of the Sea I (2018), Crema laguna stone, 15 × 38 × 43 cm