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I sing of the sea I am mermaid of the trees
- 20 Cyanotype Panels 3.5 meters high
- 9 channel sound 34:41 minutes
2021
I sing of the sea, I am mermaid of the trees, is a multichannel audio and textile installation commissioned by the 2021 Liverpool Biennale.
Hameed’s installation follows the laying down of the first undersea telegraphic cable between India and Britain in the second half of the nineteenth century, that was precipitated by the six week delay for Britain to get news of the outbreak of the Revolt of 1857.
Her installation moves this history underwater, taking us to battles against the forces of the seafloor, through the fragile nervousness of cable signals, and to the forests in Sarawak from where gutta percha was extracted by indigenous peoples to insulate the thousands of miles of undersea cables. I sing of the sea considers how communication can act as a kind of violence, transmitted across the seafloor, consolidating Britain’s imperial control over India. If Imperial Britain was the mother country and its colonies its offspring, then the undersea cable was a kind of pathological, strangulating umbilical cord. This is a subaquatic story of those offspring.
Excerpt of full audio. Audio caption can be placed here if necessary. Audio caption can be placed here if necessary.
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A village of trees on the sea floor
A milky white song mists a thread up the purple sea
and disappears
Into watery sunbeams tipped into the ocean sky
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