Esther Kokmeijer
Born: 08.04.1977 in Dokkum, the
Netherlands.
Based in Rotterdam
Kokmeijer is an artist, explorer, designer and photographer that works around the globe. She has been working with scientist in many of her projects, participated in expeditions and traveled to over 84 countries.
Deep meaning of voyaging
In the Marshall Islands of Micronesia in the Pacific, the natives where using the sun, stars and the wind to navigate big distances on the open ocean between the Islands. They could also locate them-selves looking at, and feeling patterns of swell, currents and waves in the ocean. These patterns get disrupted by the Islands which then indicates where you are in relation to an island. They made charts of sticks to transfer this knowledge. The charts showed how the bigger whether systems, the trade winds and the currents behaved in the ocean around the Islands. This knowledge has almost died
out. Colonization and modernization have washed away their old knowledge.
Modernization has also caused global warming and rising of the sea level, treating not just the people but also the existence of the Islands. Kokmeijer together with some artists are working on collecting knowledge from the native culture before its to late.
Chosen Works
Kokmeijer has made four works concerning
this topic:-
Regarding the Waves
The Path Through the Waves
The backbone swell
Climate as Artefact
I looked at the metods used in
”Regarding the waves” and ”the backbone swell”
Regarding the Waves
Installation / wood, hammocks, willow branches,
rope
This exhibition explores how the natives used waves as a navigation tool. One of their methods was to lay down in their boat, becoming one with the boat and feeling the waves. Kokmeijer made a installation of hammocks where you can “feel what is like to trust your bodily senses and reflect”. She also made stick charts based on the charts the natives used to transfer knowledge of the ocean.
The Backbone Swell
Photo series / Pacific Ocean at Marshall Islands /
2018
The relib swell is the strongest of all the swells in the pacific and is referred to as the backbone swell. The swell is generated by the north east trade wind which is present the whole year. The trade winds is a part of a bigger whether system. You have the north easterly trade winds and the south easterly trade winds that is blowing from east and is the dominant winds close to the equator.
My Research
In the North Sea we have the westerlies as the dominant wind. It typically hits the south west coast of Norway from south west. That means that when the dominant wind direction hits Byfjorden and the archipelago outside of Bergen, the wind gets led in the valley of Bergen and all the small valleys surrounding Bergen. Th is makes the wind much stronger some places and less other places. You can read the landscape trough the surface of the sea, and you can read the wind through the landscape.
I went out sailing to an Island in the archipelago. The wind was steady from the south and by knowing the landscape I tried to navigate through the fjord so that there was always good wind in the sails. I studied how the gusts where coming from the valleys and how you have to go far away from some mountains so that the wind doesn’t get sheltered. My goal was to take pictures of the gusts, and the valleys that generated the gusts, the places where it was almost no wind and so on, but I had to focus on sailing because the wind varied so much. Instead I made a map of how I navigated and how the wind behaved the different places.
Methods
The Island disrupt waves. Drawing on right side shows a diagram of how swell moves in relation to the Island and a typical Marshall stick map.
The main wind direction in Bergen is from south west. But wind gets led through the valleys in the geological phenomenon called ”the Bergen arch”.
A stick map of the fjords around Bergen, showing the main wind direction and how it gets curved around the arch of Bergen.
