Standing with the Sea: Reflections on Sarah Cameron Sunde’s 36.5

36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea is a series of performance works and video works created by Sarah Cameron Sunde that engage people on personal, local, and global scales in conversations about deep time and sea-level rise. It began with a poetic gesture – standing in water for 12 hours and 48 minutes while the tide rose and fell on her body – and has grown into a complex, collaborative, evolving series of works spanning seven years and six continents. By executing these works in seas around the world in both live and video form, Sunde invites those who encounter the project to reflect on our contemporary relationship to water, as individuals, in community, and as a civilization.

Each work in the series consists of deep community engagement, a live performance event, a time-lapse video, and a long-form cinematic video work from a different coastal location.