Joeri Verbesselt will present a paper presentation during a panel on Blue Aesthetics: Art and Aquatic Life at the 2026 Annual Conference of the Association for Art History at the University of Cambridge on April 9.
Abstract:
The opening scene of my film Only with hunters do we have wild animals (34’, 2024), recorded underwater around the Pacific island of Pongso no Tao, shows a moment when the camera, left on the seabed, is almost ceremoniously encircled by fish, before dispersing. This singular event, afterwards interpreted by the local Tao fisherman and novelist Syaman Rapongan as the fishes’ assessment of whether the device was a speargun, became a point of departure for imagining a cinematic voice for fishes through subtitles that translate an imagined underwater dialogue on the ontology of the camera, the white human behind it, and reflections on larger fishes-humans relations.
I reflect on the intentions behind these fishy subtitles as an experiment beyond anthropomorphism, seeking accountable ways of giving voice to non-human beings. Drawing on theories of non-human agency and sovereignty, I explore how this practice intersects with debates in visual anthropology concerning who speaks for, about, and with Others, and Barbary Myerhoff’s suggestion therein for a third voice—a fusion of the maker’s and the subject’s voices, intertwined so that it becomes impossible to tell which one leads the narrative.
In this exercise in interspecies storytelling, I experiment with a fictioning that acknowledges ethical mediation, foregrounds reciprocity, and reimagines the sea and fishes not as scenery but as living interlocutors.
