The Lines No Longer Hold
Rona LeeAbstract
the lines no longer hold (tlnlh) was a 5-hour action by Lee, commissioned to close the exhibition Dark, Liquid. Vom Wissen und Nicht-Wissen über das Meer at Galerie Nord, Kunstverein Tiergarten, in Berlin.
The exhibition addressed the positioning of the sea within various discourses and knowledge systems. tlnlh built on Leverhulme funded research by Lee into scientific methods of deep sea survey (2009-12), extending that enquiry to address bathymetric systems of representation. Historically, western imaginaries of the sea have positioned it legally, conceptually and economically as a mere surface or space of transit; a circumstance reflected in the common cartographic practice of representing it as a blank (Steinberg 2001). Technological advances, in tandem with moves to territorialise undersea environments and growing levels of threat to marine eco-systems, necessitate that this lacuna be rethought. It is to this oversight that tlnlh was directed, bringing processes of fixing and flattening the fluidity, variability and depth of the sea into question and investigating how artistic methods and processes might obviate the tendencies of these to occlude the materiality of undersea environments.
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