Matthew Fuller/Graham Harwood “Requiem for Cod”

Shedhalle / Exhibitions / Lands End / Artists

Matthew Fuller/Graham Harwood, UK: “Reqieum for Cod”, documentary video, 5 min, 2010

Like the sound installation of Jana Winderen, “A Requiem for Cod” introduces an approach to landscape that goes beyond things visible. In a further line of thought, in this case, however, the project no longer is directed toward the human audience but aims at getting access to the communication system of fish. The documentary video, first, explains the technical equipment used to play sound material to young codfish.

Underwater microphones are placed into the estuary of the river Themse reproducing the calls of spawning cod. We see the boat and hear this strange, never heard “singing” of fish. Furthermore, we see the estuary, the sea, the scintillating horizon, in short, the surface called “landscape”, well-known to us all. We do not know what’s happening under water or whether anything is taking place at all. This work, thus, not only demonstrates that the communication system of fish is a blind spot to humans but it intervenes in it in an absurd way. Since the young codfish actually cannot deal with these spawning calls in any way, the calls go unheard. A strange sadness lies on the whole scene, a melancholy, bearing witness to the end of the wild cod, one kind of fish threatened by over-fishing and infertility.