Iroojrilik

The film work captures the structures’ of the Bikini Atolls’ atomic-industrial architecture decay, its manner of editing further suggesting morphological overlaps with the monstrous wrecks lying on the bottom of the Bikini Atoll lagoon, assailed by tide and time. Making no use of archival material––its original underwater images captured at depths far below standard dive profiles––Iroojrilik is unquestionably the most unique, and comprehensive, perspective on the maritime ruins of Bikini ever put together. Yet, rather than explicating individual vessels or buildings, the cumulative impression given is that of an Atlantis or lost civilization —architectural features of one ship cut together with those of others, such that it appears as though a submerged mega-structure has been discovered. On a more general note, the film employs another series of elisions and substitutions. Through a series of montages, mixing sunsets and sunrises, it proposes an uncertain distinction between daybreak and nigh fall––first light of a new day in Pacific history, and the waning of another. Visions of multiple suns and endless dawns stretch across the horizon. Pictorial energies shift and sway, like palm trees and coral ferns growing on cannon mounts, between construction and destruction, transporting the viewer to a “non-place,” or the beginning of a brave new world.