Leviathan.
In the multicomponent output, Dawood has created a multi-year, multimedia project that looks at the fault lines between human and marine ecology, climate and species. Comprising 10 films structured as an episodic series, a virtual-reality trilogy, paintings and sculptures that imagine various speculative futures, Leviathan builds into an open-source resource. When the project is exhibited, researchers present their work to new audiences in a dynamic public programme whose key aspects are integrated into the website. See Portfolio Booklet for documentation of research dimensions.
- Submitting institution
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The University of Westminster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- v3zz3
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
-
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- Location
- Venues of Episodes 1– 3: Venice (May 7 – September 24, 2017, Palazzina Canonica and Fondazione Querini Stampalia). Further details in portfolio.
- Brief description of type
- Other: Multicomponent
- Open access status
- -
- Month
- May
- Year
- 2017
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- Leviathan is a multi-layered and long-term investigative process. Dawood collaborates with a large group of experts across different fields to realise the project’s wide-ranging, multimedia components. The six film episodes included as main components of the output come from a series of ten. Other components include paintings, sculptures, a Virtual Reality trilogy and commissioned interdisciplinary research published on the project’s website. Critically investigating the under-analysed connections between three key themes of contemporary times: marine ecology (integrating science around climate change), migration and mental health, the project was developed through extensive fieldwork and collaborations with major scientific and cultural institutions internationally.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Emerging from Dawood’s research-led film-making methodology, this interdisciplinary project involves collaboration and dialogue with scientists, anthropologists, philosophers, lawyers, activists, futurists, and trauma specialists. At all stages these collaborations feed into the science fictions and speculative narratives of the film episodes, whilst providing rich content and materials through which immersive experiences and material thinking are explored. The narrative of Leviathan journeys across Europe, Asia, North Africa, engaging wide-ranging communities, and in doing so the project examines the unfolding humanitarian crisis and a wider systemic crisis within our biosphere. Coherence is achieved through an approach that makes visceral narrative connections between different formats and points of view. In formal terms, the project has discovered that this fragmented, episodic serial format, combined with a variety of media, becomes the most appropriate vehicle for conveying the psychological and environmental fragmentation to come in the age of climate change.
Leviathan was first exhibited in Venice (2017) and then shown internationally at venues in the Korea, Holland, Germany, Canada, Spain, Latvia, France, and UK. It was publicly funded by Arts Council England. Other funders and commissioners include Fondazione Querini, Fortuny, CNR-ISMAR and University of Milan, Italy; La Panacée, France; MOCA, Toronto, Canada; Screen City Biennial, Stavanger, Norway; University of Westminster, and many more.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
