35.000 €

Artwork Description

The film and the accompanying photo series stage an ambiguous investigation into the extractivist threats the Area faces by illuminating not the desirous seafloor, but the scintillating life-forms which occupy the waters above it. With a custom built Fresnel lens, Charrière ignites an abyssal campfire, attracting a menagerie of oceanic creatures whose fate would be inevitably disrupted by underwater mining operations. Midnight Zone is the latest major film production by Julian Charrière, guided by the light of a wayward Fresnel lighthouse lens sinking down the water column above the Clarion–Clipperton Zone (CCZ). Stretching between Hawaii and Mexico, this vast abyssal plain in the central Pacific Ocean is home to one of the most mineral-rich deep-sea regions on Earth. The presence of these dense deposits of polymetallic nodules has made it an intense point of economic interest in recent decades, since it contains valuable metals such as nickel, cobalt, copper, and manganese—key materials for batteries and renewable energy technologies. Still, the CCZ remains a largely unexplored frontier, home to fragile ecosystems dense with bioluminescent anglerfish, grid eye fish, elusive sleeper sharks, and the giant sixgill sharks, as well as slow-growing corals, sponges, and unique, often undiscovered species adapted to extreme conditions. The growing push for deep-sea mining in this region raises serious concerns about irreversible habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, and the disruption of carbon-cycling processes in one of the planet’s last untouched biomes. The presence of the lighthouse, unbound from the terrestrial tower and wheeling through water shimmering with life, seeks to challenge our conception of these deep, submerged regions as largely lifeless. Rejecting the fixed vantage point recognizable from classic nature documentaries, the camera, reeling and untethered, orbits the suspended lantern. As underwater species gather and disperse around the drifting light, the film acquires an anti-gravitational quality, dissolving any clear sense of orientation. No longer are we positioned as detached observers; now we seem to drift into the scene itself, moving with the beacon rather than statically imposing meaning upon it. The result is a destabilizing choreography where light, life, and viewer become entangled in shared suspension.