Tag: Visual Art

Rich men’s flood myths: Batem and Yann’s comic “Fordlandia”

In a comic book from the Belgian comic series Marsupilami the artists Batem and Yann create a satire on megalomania pipe dreams of the super rich and the fascination of the flood myth.

Set in the South-American Amazon basin, the plot is based on the true stoy of Henry Ford’s „Fordlandia“ project, a business venture the us-American automobile entrepreneur conducted in the 1920‘s in the region to secure rubber supply for the booming car industry. In the comic book a fictitious billionaire follows Ford’s footsteps into the jungle to pick up the ruinous business. But he is obsessed with the idea of a second deluge and devotes all his time – and money – into catching animals to cage on his arch. Like a true business man he does not build the arch himself but buys a mega-flying boat off another billionaire, Howard Hughes. Like Fordlandia, the legendary „H-4 Hercules“ was a massive fail too; the only one of these planes ever produced had one flight only in 1947.

The images are from my german edition of the book:

The story was published in 1991 but one can’t help think of today’s grant rescue schemes of the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It’s a common feature of today’s climate debate, that billionaires seek and succesfully generate public attention to techno-utopian elitist projects. The nice twist in Batem and Yann’s story is that this rescue project is completely built on the past failures of similar minded men.

In addition to these megalomania schemes and failures, the story also references environmental destruction and authoritarian development projects in developing countries: When the deluge does eventually come, it is not a universal one but just the massive tidal wave from a bust reservoir dam, that was finished just before by the authoritarian regime of Palumbia, the fictitious state the adventures of the Marsupilami are set in.

Time and Tide Bells

Since 2008 artist and bell-maker Marcus Vergette has been developing the multi-site installation series Time and Tide Bells in various coastal spots across the UK. The installations consist of two bells, one upside down on top of the other, set up in tidal zones so that the waves ring the lower bell during high tide. The work references the many legends of sunken cities of which the church bells can allegedly be heard ringing on the coast on certain sundays. (see also the post here)

In 2010 the project installed also a bell in London. Meanwhile there are seven other “Time and Tide Bells”installed across the island. You can check for the locations here.

The first Bell on the coast of Devon, South England.

All images are from the project’s website.

FloodZone – an ongoing visual research of life in the tidal zone

FloodZone is an ongoing photographic series by Anastasia Samoylova, responding to the environmental changes in coastal cities of South Florida. The project began in Miami in 2016, when Samoylova moved to the area and experience living in a tropical environment for the first time.
The works display in an impressive way the ambivalences and the fluid frontiers between city and sea in a community exposed to frequent floodings. I am particularly impressed who artist Samoylova expands the topic and visual themes onto popular imagery and the everyday in the urban scenerie.

All images are from the artist’s website. Some works are currently on display at Stuio Hanniball in Berlin (until April 14. 2023).

Thanks to Ulrike Heine for the lead!

Man made flooding in “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks”

The Belgian animation movie and comic book from 1972 and 1973 is set around an artificial lake in a fictious mountain state in the Balkans. We do not learn much about the history of the lake but Tintin explains during the landing flight that a whole town had to be evacuated in order to create the lake. We also learn that the locals think of the lake as a bad place or as cursed, implying that the flooding was not at all desirable, possibly it was experienced as an act of cruelty and arrogance towards the local population.

As Tintin finds out eventually the buildings of this submerged town now serve as hideaway for the story’s villain.

Later in the story, there is a submarine chase in the town’s streets. The movie makes much humorous use of the strange intactness of the architecture of the submerged city, for example when Capt. Haddock in his submarine ponders over a “Do not enter”-street sign whether to ignore it or not. In the comic book, Haddock cusses at the other submarine just like a typical driver in any city traffic:

This illustrates quite well the peculiar condition and uncanny of submerged cities.

At the climax of the plot, the submerged town is once again destroyed, this time by explosives set within the villain’s hideaway. In an interesting revearsal of the function of a flood meter above water, the explosives are triggered by a flood meter, measuring the rise of the water entering into the building that is below the lake’s surface. When the room become fully flooded, the buildings of the submerged town explode, sending a massive tsunami-like wave across the lake’s surface.

This probably mirrors and repeats the situation the town got submerged in originally. And it signals the second and presumably final destruction of the town.

The full comic book in english is available here.

See also my other post on the various covers here.

Covers of “Tintin and the Lake of Sharks”

This classic Tintin comic story around an underwater city in a lake appeared first as a movie and a year later as a comic book. While the movie poster displayed various imaes from the movie in a rather playful manner, the first french language book edition had a much more dramatic cover, clearly shifting the focus of the story towards disaster narrative.

The movie poster from 1972:

The cover of the Belgian comic book from 1973:

At least two other covers appeared for different editions of the story:

See also my other post about the story here.

Islands and Whales

In folktales from various cultures there are tales of sea animals so big, that they get mistaken for islands. In some stories, sailors land on them and spend time on “land” before realizing that they are actually on top of a living, breathing animal. These islands accordingly appear and disappear, rise and sink into the ocean frequently. In the Irish Legend of Saint Brendan, Brendan of Clonfert, a monch and fabled navigator, and his disciples land on a giant sea creature called Jasconius. “Because of its size, Brendan and his fellow voyagers mistake it for an island and land to make camp. They celebrate Easter on the sleeping giant’s back, but awaken it when they light their campfire. They race to their ship, and Brendan explains that the moving island is really Jasconius, who labors unsuccessfully to put his tail in its mouth.”

In mythology sea animals often trick humans into believing that they are on safe, solid ground. But equally often, they rescue people from floods and offer their bodies as rescue boats. See for example the tale about the fish Matsya here.

Japanese waves

Waves are a popular element in Japanese arts and crafts, particularly in the many wood carvings from the 19. century, like the famous “Great Wave” (around 1830) by Hokusai. Here is an example, a small saucer from a random Asian food store in Germany:

In an insttruction book from 1903 Japanese artist Mori Yuzan displayed and explained hundreds of wave designs. the book can be viewed for free at archive.org:

The Sea according to the Brothers Forman

These images are from an exhibition at the Japanese Palais in Dresden in 2023. The installation is by the Czech artist group Forman Brothers. The look is very reminiscent of Japanese art. The design here uses only the wave crests to signify water, the ground is left untouched and grey. the waves are all individual pieces, so this sea can flow everywhere, wave by wave.

Climate Catastrophe pictured in 1986

Already in 1986 the well known German news-magazine Der Spiegel published this image on it’s front page. It depicts the Dome of Cologne, one of the most important cultural heritage sites of Germany, partially flooded. The visual strategies of the media have not changed much in the last 35 years!

This is the same German magazine 10 years later.

I can’t say whether the change in motiv is due to a hightened awareness of the global interconnectedness of the issue or because Germany hosted the 1. UN Climate Change Conference that year.

Storm sculpture in Bremerhaven

The New Harbour in Bremerhaven is protected by a dike. Behind the dike lie the German Maritime Museum, the Klimahaus and further behind the city’s center. Right behind the dike stands a sculpture to commemorate the danger of storm surges. Copper rings on the pole of the sculpture show the maximum water levels of past storm surges (1717, 1825, 1906, 1936, 1962, 1973). On the top is a copper model of the Bremen Hanseatic Cog over a globe that can be rotated in the wind. The model was created by the Bremerhaven sculptor Gerhard Olbrich in 1975 and can be seen from both sides of the dike.