Midnight Zone, 2024

Midnight Zone, 2024, extract

In Midnight Zone, a Fresnel lighthouse lens—a tool to aid navigation—guides the film downward, metre by metre, through teeming schools of fish and sharks: their whirling figures glinting like a thousand fluid mirrors around the light source; so many aquatic moths to a flame. As its powerful light beam spins through the deep, slicing through darkness, the surrounding gyre of swimming creatures becomes a living kaleidoscope. Following the falling lamp’s initial submersion, it attracts more biomass with every passing fathom, until a point of crescendo, after which the giddy swarm slowly thins out. This decrease in the registers of the great depths was achieved by the probe. By the end of the filmic sequence, captured by an underwater drone piloted by the artist, the lamp has arrived at the beginning of an aquatic threshold: a domain otherwise impervious to light, too deep for photons from the sun to penetrate—the so-called ‘midnight zone’.

As Midnight Zone attests, we humans can now enter the extreme subaquatic realm with the help of our tools. In turn, this space becomes subject to our trans-atmospheric agency. In fact, deep-sea mining companies have set their sights on mineral deposits on and below the seafloor—a prospect with catastrophic implications for marine ecology. With all sea layers linked by food chains, energy flows, and currents, any disturbance can disrupt the balance. Charriere’s work dives into this issue. Midnight Zone was filmed in the waters above the Clarion-Clipperton Fracture, an area whose seabed is a potential mining ground, rich in polymetallic nodules. In this light, the presence of the Fresnel illuminates the extractive optic that views any region of the planet as a potential site for exploitation.

Text by Nadim Samman.

4K video, 16:10 aspect ratio, 3D ambisonics soundscape, 56 min., continuous video loop

Film
Editor: Johannes Förster
Score: Laurel Halo
Spatial Sound Designer: Felix Deufel
Sound Design Assistant: Nino Theys
Lead Compositing Artist: Sean Sams
Compositing Artists: Kalle Max Hoffmann, Neil Reynolds
Editing Assistant: Leoni Faschian
Colorist: Johannes Förster
Post-Production Supervisor: Johannes Förster
Post-Production Coordination Assistant: Hannah Weidner

Expedition
ROV Operator & Director of Photography (DoP): Antoine Drancey
ROV Operator Assistant: Brieg Dufée
Marine Engineer: Christophe LeClercq
Underwater Camera Operator: Adil Schindler
Production Support (Above and Beneath the Waves): Runar Jarle Stray Wiik
Underwater Guide & Safety Diver: Sten Johansson
Production Management Assistant: Hannah Weidner
Onsite Production & Coordination: Tanya Johansson, Sten Johansson
Vessel Operators: Dora Sierra, Susan Long, Pablo, Noberto, Manuel, Cinco, Manolo, Everardo, Leonardo, Jerson

Acknowledgements
Special thanks to the many scientists and guides who contributed invaluable knowledge and support along the way, as well as project contributors: Pedro Alonzo, Benjamin Coppel, The Coppel Foundation, Haley Ha, Allison Miller, Logan Mock, Hannah Nolan, Carlie Wiener (Schmidt Ocean Institute), The Shifting Foundation