BELOW SEA LEVEL
2009 · 360° panoramic video-and-sound installation · 38-minute continuous loop ·
Created, directed, filmed, and edited by Paweł Wojtasik
Soundscape by Stephen Vitiello
Panoramic technology and creative consultant: Gian Pablo Villamil
Produced by Denise Markonish and MASS MoCA
Below Sea Level is an immersive panoramic installation filmed in post-Katrina New Orleans. Projected across the interior of a circular screen, the work surrounds viewers with landscapes, waterways, industrial structures, neighborhoods, and inhabitants of a city shaped by water, loss, endurance, and continual transformation.
Documentation of Below Sea Level, a 360° panoramic video-and-sound installation. This exhibition view was recorded at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) in North Adams, Massachusetts, where the work was first presented from April 2009 through February 2010. Below Sea Level was later included in Prospect.2 New Orleans biennial.
About the Work
Below Sea Level is a 360-degree panoramic video-and-sound installation created for a cylindrical projection structure measuring approximately 35 feet in diameter and 12 feet in hight. Viewers enter the structure and stand within a continuous circular image, with no privileged front and no single position from which the whole work can be seen at once.
Filmed in New Orleans and the surrounding wetlands after Hurricane Katrina, the work moves through waterways, industrial landscapes, neighborhoods, interiors, and encounters with residents of the city. Its form is spatial rather than linear: images unfold around the viewer, requiring the body to turn and attention to shift from one part of the circumference to another.
Stephen Vitiello’s ambient soundscape extends the installation beyond the visible image, while the continuous loop removes a fixed beginning or ending. The work is experienced not simply as a sequence of images, but as an environment entered and inhabited.
Press
Doug MacCash, “Prospect.2 New Orleans Best of the Show: 5 Exhibits That Should Not Be Missed,” The Times-Picayune / NOLA.com, November 13, 2011
MacCash selected Below Sea Level as one of five essential exhibitions at Prospect.2, praising its enveloping 360-degree imagery and calling it “a transporting experience.”
Kathy Rodriguez, “Round Up: The Best of Prospect.2 New Orleans: Part 2,” Pelican Bomb, November 11, 2011
Rodriguez describes the work as a rare biennial installation deeply connected to its host city. She considers its panoramic architecture, its movement among neighborhoods, bayous, river industry, and local communities, and calls it a mutable poetic statement created with “captivating grace.”
Alex Rawls, “Prospect.2: Leveling Out,” OffBeat Magazine, October 24, 2011
Rawls identifies Below Sea Level as one of Prospect.2’s signature installations. He emphasizes how the circular projection surrounds the viewer, transforms bridges, waterways, and refineries through scale, and makes looking an active, social experience. He also describes the work as a gently effective form of environmental activism.
Read the article in OffBeat Magazine
Exhibitions
Prospect.2 New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, October 22, 2011–January 29, 2012
Presented as part of Prospect.2 New Orleans.
MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts, April 4, 2009–March 1, 2010
Commissioned for These Days: Elegies for Modern Times, curated by Denise Markonish.
Read about the exhibition at MASS MoCA
Read the exhibition brochure (PDF)
