To present the artwork as original as possible, this video is showing all 4 channels of The Deep Scattering Layer in a single channel. It will be gifted exclusively to Sedition's collectors who purchase an artwork collection by Herwig Scherabon, The Deep Scattering Layer (all four artworks).
Following a research trip to the Amazon rainforest, Herwig Scherabon created a series of artworks that premiered in Berlin during the artist's solo show called Against Nature. The four-channel installation The Deep Scattering Layer being the last one in the series most vividly illustrates the concept; our understanding of life and reality from an anthropocentric point of view is in desperate need of an update. While we are used to reading humanoid motion as "alive", we often struggle to find the same sense of agency in things that are inanimate or even merely non-human but in motion nonetheless.
On a surface level, we, humans are of course aware of the vitality of fungi and plant life. Our understanding of reality, however, stays untouched by this awareness. We still think of the value of life being something that correlates with individuality and intelligence. For a truly transcendent experience of the world around us, we need to think in terms of a flat ontology: everything is an object, even we ourselves are. An enormous agglomeration of objects is an object as well (a hyperobject; see T. Morton). The prevalent subject-object dualism of continental philosophy makes it difficult for us to acknowledge non-human life as such. With this and many other of my artworks, I am hoping to create experiences of life beyond and contribute a little bit to a transformative notion of reality.
The Deep Scattering Layer is a term borrowed from marine biology. There are significant layers of marine life that have been mistaken for the sea bottom – merely because human sonic measurements indicated a resistance for a long time. Discovering life from the place where understood as deadends awakens in us a new joy for the beauty in our reality like a colourful event horizon.
