A Liminal Experience Under the Surface of the Ocean

UNIVERSIDADE DE LISBOA FACULDADE DE BELAS-ARTES

APNEA

A liminal experience under the surface of the ocean

Janna Nadjejda Ribow Guichet

Dissertação

Mestrado em Arte Multimedia

Especialização em Fotografia

Dissertação orientada pela Professora Doutora

Maria João Pestana Noronha Gamito

2021

DECLARAÇÃO DE AUTORIA

Eu Janna Nadjejda Ribow Guichet, declaro que a presente dissertação de mestrado intitulada “Apnéia”, é o resultado da minha investigação pessoal e independente. O conteúdo é original e todas as fontes consultadas estão devidamente mencionadas na bibliografia ou outras listagens de fontes documentais, tal como todas as citações diretas ou indiretas têm devida indicação ao longo do trabalho segundo as normas académicas.

O Candidato

[assinatura]

Lisboa, 27.10.19

RESUMO

O trabalho é sobre uma imersão no oceano e em nós mesmos. A questão é: como podemos obter um efeito positivo por meio do oceano? O primeiro capítulo analisará os pensamentos antigos e contemporâneos do sublime; A figura do vórtice foi usada nas artes e na literatura para criar sensações sublimes, Immanuel Kant e Edmund Burke afirmaram que o sublime pode trazer um efeito positivo que será discutido. Uma sensação sublime diferente é a Liminalidade, que encontrei durante a Apnéia. Muitos artistas descrevem seu poder transformador, que será comparado à pesquisa médica científica. Mas a mensagem fundamental permanece: “A experiência sublime é fundamentalmente transformadora, sobre a relação entre desordem e ordem, e a ruptura das coordenadas estáveis de tempo e espaço. Algo se precipita e somos profundamente alterados.” (Morley, 2010, p.12)

O segundo capítulo define Ambientes Imersivos em Artes e Apnéia. Após a experiência liminar comecei a treinar o desporto e aprendi a controlar minha mente e corpo de forma imersiva, o que trouxe à tona os conceitos: ponto do silêncio (preparação), jogo mental (submersão) e foco (volta a superfície). “A imersão ... absorvendo mentalmente é um processo, uma mudança, uma passagem de um estado mental para outro. Caracteriza-se por diminuir a distância crítica em relação ao que é mostrado e aumentar o envolvimento emocional com o que está a acontecer.” (Grau, 2013, p.13)

O terceiro capítulo é sobre Apnéia, que é ao mesmo tempo o título da dissertação, e a metodologia para chegar a mim mesma, que aplico na vida real. As minhas metodologias foram a pesquisa sobre o antigo e o sublime contemporâneo. Eu li, analisei e interpretei filosofia, mitos, lendas, literatura e obras de arte em contextos artísticos e científicos. Aprendi e pratiquei na vida real os conceitos imersivos encontrados. Para compartilhar o efeito, aprendi a fotografar debaixo d'água sem oxigênio. O trabalho final é um livro immersivo chamado Ocean Immersion, que tenta tirar o ser humano da vida stressante e contemporânea; acalme-o, deixe-o voltar a focar e preenchê-lo com admiração para abrir um ponto de vista subjetivo sobre nossa existência e como podemos lidar com ela.

Palavras-chave:

Sublime, Ambientes Imersivos, Liminalidade, Apnéia, Fotografia

ABSTRACT

The work is about an immersion into the ocean and into ourselves. The question is: how can we gain a positive effect through the ocean? The first chapter will analyze the old and contemporary thoughts of the sublime; the figure of the vortex was used in arts and literature to create sublime sensations, Immanuel Kant and Edmund Burke claimed that the sublime can bring up a positive effect which will be discussed. A different sublime sensation is liminality, which I encountered during apnea. Many artists describe it´s transformative power which will be compared to scientific medical research. But the fundamental message remains: “The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered. “ (Morley, 2010, p.12) The second chapter defines Immersive Environments in Arts and Apnea. After the liminal experience I started to train the sport and learned to control my mind and body in an immersive way, which brought up the concepts: still point (preparation), the mind game (submersion) and the focus (resurface). “Immersion…is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another. It characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement what is happening.”(Grau, 2013, p.13) The third chapter is about Apnea, which is at the same time the title of the dissertation, and the methodology to arrive to myself, which I apply in real life. My methodology was the research about the old and contemporary sublime. I read, analyzed, and interpreted philosophy, myths, legends, literature and artworks in artistic and scientific contexts. I learned and practiced in real life the immersive concepts which I found. To share the effect, I learned to photograph underwater without oxygen. The final work is an immersive book called Ocean Immersion which attempts to drag the human out of the stressful, contemporary life; calm him down, let him refocus and fulfill him with wonder to open a subjective point of view on our existence and how we should deal with it.

Keywords:

Sublime, Immersive Environments, Liminality, Apnea, Photography

III

A diver immerses under the surface to watch, a freediver to look into oneself.”

Pelizzari, 2014, p.1281.

Be free as a wild animal. Dive naked like a dolphin, into the abyss of the sea and fly high into the infinite blue of the sky and glide, silent, like an albatross in the petty world of man; to become air, to be immersed in water and to merge with it and to find yourself again.

Jacques Mayol apud Dancini, 2005, p.202.

Acknowledgements

1 Original: “El submarinista bucea para ver. El apneista lo hace para mirarse por dentro.” 2 Original: “Ser livre como um animal selvagem. Mergulhar nu, como um golfinho, no abismo do mar e voar bem alto no azul infinito do ceu e planar, silencioso, como um albatroz no mundo mesquinho do homem; tornar-se ar, imergir-se na agua e com ela fundir-se e reecontrar-se.”

Thank you to my love Tomás for bringing me back to the sea Thank you Maria João Gamito for orienting me on this difficult path Thank you, Mafalda and Mario from Spot-Freedive Team, for immersing me into the ocean and for all the free support. Thank you to my parents to grow up close to the sea Thank you to my sisters, brothers and cousins Thank you, my dear family and friends, for your existence Thank you to my dear mother, aunt & Grandma Thank you to Family Guichet

Index

Introduction………………………………………………..…………..…..….….01

1. Sublime……………………………………………….…….……………….….03 1.1 Vortex…………….………………………………………………….……….….04 1.2 Liminality………………………………………………………………………..12

2. Immersive Environments…………………………………….….....19 2.1 Still Point…………………………………………………………………….…..26 2.2 Mind Game……………………………………………………………………....29 2.3 Focus……………………………………………………………………………..35

3. Apnea………………………………………………………………...39 3.1 Description of the project………………………………………………………..43 3.2 Analysis of the artistic work……………………………………………………..68

Conclusion……………………………………………………….……..73

VII

Index of Figures

Fig.1. Harry Clark: Illustration in E.A.Poe, Descent into the Maelstrom, 1919. (Consulted: 15.04.19; http://rebloggy.com/post/illustration-art-ink-edgar-allan-poe-harry-clarke-descent- into-the-maelstrom-tal/74090937359)

Fig.2. Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina, Sweden, 1539. (Consulted: 19.11.18; https://www.ecosia.org/images/?q=carte%20marine%20olaus%20magnus#id=3E6C8EEC0732 E0FFC66C056037C72E5593791424)

Fig.3. Olaus Magnus, Carta Marina, Sweden, 1539. (Consulted: 20.10.19; https://fineartamerica.com/featured/carta-marina-map-of-scandinavia-by-olaus-magnus-1539- pablo-romero.html)

Fig.4. Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850. (Consulted: 15.04.19; http://the-creative- business.com/de/waves-10-amazing-sea-paintings-by-famous-artists/)

Fig.5. Ivan Aivazovsky, Among the Waves, 1898. (Consulted: 15.04.19; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Aivazovsky#/media/File:Ayvaz_sredy_voln.jpg)

Fig.6. Walter Crane, Neptune´s Horses, 1892. (Consulted: 19.11.18; https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Walter_Crane_- _Neptune%27s_Horses_%281910%29.jpg)

Fig.7. Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, ca. 1829–1833. (Consulted: 19.11.2018;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Wave_off_Kanagawa)

Fig.8. Alex Botelho, Praia Norte Nazare, 2016. (Consulted: 20.10.19; http://swell- algarve.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/12/15036530_1447530751941718_716804498001721604_n-1- 750x450.jpg)

Fig.9. Gary Hill, Learning Curve, 1993. (Consulted: 2010.19; http://garyhill.com/work/mixed_media_installation/learning-curve.html)

Fig.10. Newman, Barnett, Onement VI, 1953. (Consulted: 15.04.19; http://antiquesandartireland.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/newman.jpg)

Fig.11. Great Frieze of the Dionysiac Mystery, Pompeii, 60. B.C. (Consulted: 20.10.19; https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii-villa-EU- deadline-looms.html)

Fig.12. Anton von Werner and 13 other Painters, The Battle of Sedan, Berlin, 1883. (Consulted: 20.10.19; http://rd.uqam.ca/AHWA/Meetings/2000.CIHA/Grau.html)

Fig.13. Monet, Water Lilies series, 1915-1917. (Consulted: 15.01.20; http://content.time.com/time/travel/cityguide/article/0,31489,1937013_1936990_1936849,00.ht ml)

Fig.14. Caspar David Friedrich, The Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, 1818. (Consulted:10.01.20; https://www.geo.de/magazine/geo-epoche-edition/20083-rtkl-deutsche- romantik-caspar-david-friedrich-die-landschaft-der)

Fig.15. James Turrell, The Light Inside, 1990. (Consulted: 15.01.20

VIII https://www.archdaily.com/380911/light-matters-seeing-the-light-with-james-turrell)

Fig.16. Andrea Pozzo, Nave of Sant´Ignazio, 1694. (Consulted: 20.10.19; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Pozzo#/media/Datei:Decke-santignazio-rom.jpg)

Fig.17. Gravure Skandalopetra, Greece, 1800. (Consulted: 21.10.19; http:divingheritage.com/greece2.htm)

Fig.18-23. Janna Nadjejda, Okeanos, 2018.

Fig.24-29. Janna Nadjejda, Immersion, 2018.

Fig.30-35. Janna Nadjejda, Kimata, 2019.

Fig.36. William Thomson, 1. Underwater photograph, 1856. (Consulted: 21.10.19; https://sites.google.com/site/underwaterphotographygreece/a-short-history/1850 )

Fig.37. Luis Boutan, 1 of the first underwaterphotograhs, 1893. (Consulted: 21.10.19; https://petapixel.com/2016/09/02/worlds-first-underwater-portrait-taken-1899/)

Fig. 38-70. Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

IX X Introduction

The ocean is a place of awe and wonder since very ancient times. This dissertation is about a deep immersion into the ocean and into us. The question is: how can we get a benefit or positive effect through it? The work has three chapters. The first one is about the sublime in an old and contemporary context. I researched several objectives: swimming, surfing, diving and freediving to find the concepts. But how can we get a sublime feeling in the ocean? The philosophers Kant and Burke described how nature can evoke a sublime sensation which can strengthen, transform the self or bring it to a higher level. Further, I found many artworks which contain a liquid swirl, a vortex, for instance, Descent into the Maelstrom from Harry Clark, Neptune’s Horses from Walter Crane and the Great Wave of Kanagawa from Katsushika Hokusai. These artworks will be analyzed with respect to the aesthetical characteristics those philosophers wrote about. The research on Apnea brought up another way to look at the sublime. I encountered liminality as a crossroad, transformation point, a gap with an impressive effect on our mind and experience. Artists like Barnett Newman, Marina Abramovic, Gary Hill and Bill Viola bring up liminal experiences. I will compare their statements to scientific research of Wallace Nichols along with experiences of professional freedivers and my own. The second chapter analyzes immersive environments; freediving is a full immersion, not only into the ocean but also into us. Apnea brings up four concepts: the preparation before the dive as still point, the submersion where our focus remains on the mind game, the resurface as focus and finally liminality which was explained in the previous chapter. The third chapter is about the artistic project. To accomplish this work, an extra effort was taken to deeply connect to the ocean and obtain enough valid material. The process ranged from surfing classes, to a Padi Open Water Certificate, to two Aida Freediving Certificates, Aida 2 Freediver Course and Aida 3 Advanced Freediver. In total, I made four projects about the sea, every one of them was a step closer to the ocean, until I found Apnea and immersed into it. It was a personal journey to me and a discovery of many functions and positive effects of the ocean on mind and body. The

1 artistic project is called Ocean Immersion and is a liminal experience under the surface of the ocean. It is photographed underwater; the maximum depth of the images is fifteen meters under the surface. For the project Apnea, I used several methodologies. I researched the concept of the sublime in an old and contemporary context. I read, analyzed and interpreted philosophy, myths, legends, literature and artworks in artistic and scientific contexts. I learned and practiced in real life the immersive concepts that I found: still point, mind game and focus and related them with scientific research and personally experienced liminality twice. To share this experience, I learned to photograph underwater without supply of oxygen. The artistical project Ocean Immersion is a book which contains a short text and twenty-four photographs which is a voyage into the depths of the ocean. It is an immersive artwork which attempts to drag the human out of the stressful, contemporary life, into the quiet and peaceful underwater world. It showcases the limitation of the human self, and the capability to face and overcome fear and gain a strengthen and transformed self on a higher level. It calms, refocuses, and fulfills the spectator with wonder and opens a subjective point of view on our existence.

1. Sublime

The word sublime comes from the Latin word sublimis,`sub´, what means up to and `limen´, a limit what is passed, a threshold. Alchemists used the word when substances turn into gas, as well as when the mind experiences a higher level of spiritual existence. Chemistry today still uses the word for the technical processes. The word `sublime´ first appeared in a fragment of an old Greek paper; the Roman-era author Longinus wrote about it. The first one to ever translate this was Nicolas Boileau in 1674. The powerful emotional effect of an artwork was the focus. Following Longinus, this sublime sensation emerged if the artwork would contain something unknown and threatening, giving the feeling to wonder about something. The word changed in the eighteenth century and showed up as the limitation of the human self and that intensive experiences are over our consciousness and not always under control. The romantic movement implemented this new perspective of the sublime. They wanted to get away from the old thoughts of religion, by focusing on the perception of the human experience as a new era. They wanted to escape the normal patterns and see what lies beyond them. Because we recognize this limitation, we gain in the end a positive effect, rethinking our own existence. The first chapter will look in the past and in the present, will examine how different the sublime can be seen and what is it´s common ground. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Edmund Burke (1727-1797) described the esthetics from the sublime as quite scary. One symbol which perfectly concludes the descriptions of the sublime is the vortex. Many paintings and writings of the era used the vortex to create sublime sensations. Barnett Newman (1905-1970) mentioned in his text from 1948 a different point of view on the sublime, he said that we must make the sublime out of ourselves out of our own experiences. Liminality was a sublime sensation I experienced at my first dive without oxygen at fifteen meters. After a big research, I found that there are many possibilities to encounter liminal states. First, I will review tragic stories in arts and literature which used the threatening symbol of the vortex and search for the real meanings the artworks contained.

1.1 Vortex

The most powerful passion what we have is our concern about our self-preservation. Everything, which is in a way terrible, frightening or can bring up pain or danger can be a fountain of the sublime; this is the strongest motion the mind is capable to feel. But a certain distance to the object is necessary for achieving a degree of pleasure, if not it is just horrible. Burke describes the power of the sublime with the following words:

The passion caused by the great and the sublime in nature, when those causes operate most powerfully in Astonishment, and astonishment is that state of the soul in which all its motions are suspended, with some degree of horror... No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear. For fear, being an apprehension of pain or death, operates in a manner that resembles actual pain. Whatever therefore is terrible, with regard to sight, is sublime too…Indeed terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more openly or latently, the ruling principle of the sublime (Burke, 1757, p.54).

Kant and Burke agreed that the sublime was something subjective, what occurs in the mind. Kant said that the sublime occurred from a negative experience of limits and was analyzing the consequences occurred in the consciousness: “Describing something what we are not able to understand or control” (Kant, 1790, p.274). It was about nature, and that in the end we still are not able to understand it. We cannot encompass it by thinking, explain it, describe it and so it gets unpresentable, he described it with the following words:

The feeling of the sublime is at once a feeling of displeasure, arising from the inadequacy of imagination in the aesthetic estimation of magnitude to attain to this estimation of reason, and a simultaneous awakened pleasure, arising from this very judgment of the inadequacy of sense of being in accord with ideas of reason, so far as the effort to attain to these is for us a law (Kant, 1790, p.16).

What is important is our disposition which creates the sublime, not that the object is sublime. The ocean can be an object of strong scare and there can be found many fountains of the sublime which Burke described: obscurity, power, privation, colosallness and of course infinity. Infinite is the basic form of a vortex. It was often used in arts as a figure to create the sublime sensation. The word ´vortex` (lat. vortex: swirl) stands for a cycle flow of a fluid. The vortex as a symbol can be used in many ways to create a sublime sensation. It was used to

4 connect with the bottomless, the unknown, deep down, or high up in the sky and universe. It can also symbolize the continues flow of time. It is no wonder that it was used in so many ways to create sublime sensations. Vertical swirls arise in the ocean through the change of the tides, when they get very strong and dangerous, they often are called Maelstrom. In Norway they call it Moskoe- strom where exist tidal eddies and whirlpools close to the islands Moskenes; it´s where the name comes from. The Maelstrom was used often in legends movies, literature, poetry and art, but mostly in a very exaggerated dimension like the illustration from Harry Clarke for Edgar Poe´s Descent into the Maelstrom (fig.1).

Fig.1. Harry Clark: Illustration in E.A. Poe, Descent into the Maelstrom, 1919.

Like many other artists, he wanted to create an artificial infinity. He attempted it through the dark center of the swirl. Burke describes a very interesting characteristic of the human eye: if it cannot see until the end, the mind reacts as it would be endless and creates a sublime notion. Just thinking about it as a form which can swallow one down into the deep, can make us shake. Even more so if the swirl continues the same form without interruption, our imagination continues down into the swirl. But if one overcomes it and looks at it without fear, it can enable unimaginable strength and immense joy. In Edgar Allan Poe´s story Descent into the Maelstrom an old man gets dragged into the Maelstrom, and there happens something amazing; he takes off his fear and looks at it and says: "It may look like boasting-but what I tell you is truth-I began to reflect how

5 magnificent a thing it was to die in such a manner, and how foolish it was in me to think of so paltry a consideration as my own individual life, in view of so wonderful a manifestation of God's power.” (Poe, 1841, p.8). When you encounter the sublime, it takes you away with irresistible strength. Time and space become a different meaning and you are just not in that normal pattern anymore. It’s when everything stands still, and you can just admire the object which overcomes you. The sublime causes an inner exaltation which is very pleasant for the human, more so when one is confronted with a horrible, threatening object and the defeat he then claims for himself, so just imagine the old man in the throat of the dark swirl getting stronger. Burke goes so far to have believed that the strongest passion can transform the self. He thought, like Longinus, that the sublime could ennoble something and by overpassing the challenge, facing the fear, enabled the strength: “Accordingly, when I speak of cause or effective cause, I mean only certain changes in the body, or certain powers and properties of the body that cause some change in the mind.” (Burke, 1757, p.169) 3. The old man survived the Maelstrom, maybe the sublime helped him to. But there are other examples where it didn´t go so well. In Friedrich Schiller´s poem “The Diver”, a poor guy gets the offer of a golden cup and the hand of the king´s daughter if he jumps into a Maelstrom and gets out alive. The first jump into the throat of the devil he survives and comes out with total strength and so he jumps in again to become a cavalier married to the king’s daughter. But this doesn´t go so well and the poor guy gets dragged into the bottomless from the swirl and disappears forever. In 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea the famous captain Nemo gets dragged into a maelstrom, while his compatriots can escape in the last second and get witnesses of the irresistible strength of the dark and deep swirl. Caught into a swirl everything is dark, threatening, and unclear; the unknown is the biggest fear of the human, one would rather receive a certain fall, than the unknown. Homer also used the swirl as a tragical tool, but he went a little bit further and transforms currents from the ocean into sea monsters. Close to Sicily existed two underwater currents which where very dangerous for ships; he turned the swirls into the sea monster Skylla which swallowed the ships into the deep.

3 Original: “Wenn ich demnach von Ursache oder effektiver Ursache spreche, so meine ich lediglich gewisse Affekte des Gemüts, die gewisse Veränderungen im Körper verursachen, oder gewisse Kräfte und Eigenschafen der Körper, die eine gewisse Änderung im Gemüt bewirken.” 6

The theme of swirls and sea monsters is also depicted in the old marine card from Olaus Magnus (fig.2 and 3) from 1539. On the map you see a big swirl close to Norway alongside sea monsters and threatening creatures in the ocean. The sailors must have been threatened looking at these cards full of monsters. Even knowing they are mostly swirls, this still wouldn’t take the fear from the ocean away. It will always remain a place of awe and wonder as long as we have only discovered just less than ten percent.

Fig.2. and 3. Olaus Magnus, Carta Marine, Sweden, 1539.

But in the sea there are not only vertical swirls, but there are also a lot of horizontal ones. The main figure of a wave is also formless and borderless which is one of the most known characteristics of the sublime. Kant explains that if we are not capable to imagine the wholeness of certain objects but can recognize that there is something more, this capability of knowing that there is something more but not what it is, makes us aware of our littleness and fulfils us with pleasure. Waves sometimes come thousands of kilometers over the ocean until their great power emerges. They are so unpredictable, sometimes soft and washing us free but other times so powerful that we are not capable of resisting and our body becomes a puppet in the play of the waves. Almost never can we see where it begins and where it ends. Kant distinguishes the sublime in three categories: awful, lofty, and splendid. The ocean is the embodiment of the awful with its deepness and our deep loneliness traveling on it can fulfill us with a degree of horror. Sailors, for instance whalers went many years away from their homes and had a long duration of time in front of them which brings something awful with it. Ivan Aivazovsky´s painting, the Ninth Wave (fig.4) shows a lonely raft in front of big waves just alone by itself in the middle of the great ocean. Waves are not only awful, but they can also be so lofty when the surf

7 breaks in the backlighting of the sun like in the painting Among the Waves (fig.5), from Aivazovsky, from 1898.

Fig.4. Ivan Aivazovsky, The Ninth Wave, 1850.

Fig.5. Ivan Aivazovsky, Among the Waves, 1898.

A lofty representation of gods of the antiquity can be depicted in Walter Crane´s painting Neptune’s Horses (fig.6), which shows a wave with many horses and Neptune is on top of one of them. Crane used the vortex in the painting to demonstrate the endless duration of time and uncertainty of life, our biggest threat. And in the same image he adds Neptune, without fear, in fullest joy, chasing his destiny.

Fig.6. Walter Crane, Neptune´s Horses, 1892.

Fig.7. Katsushika Hokusai, The Great Wave of Kanagawa, Japan, ca. 1829–1833.

Edmund Burke talks about the mysterious unclear objects in paintings which have more power on our imagination than clear things, the vortex becomes unclear in the end:

And yet, in painting, an obscure darkness in some cases contributes to the effect of a painting: namely, because the painted pictures are exactly like those in nature, and because even in nature, dark, confused, uncertain pictures have a greater power on the imagination and thus to exert on the excitement of violent passions, as the clearer and more specific ones do (Burke, 1989, p.97)4.

If we manage like Neptune to face that fear and get over it, we´ll get immense power from the waves and claim their force as our own (fig.6). The Great Wave of Kanagawa (fig.7) was made around 1829 from Katsushika Hokusai as a woodblock print. Most people won’t think about it when they use their emoji wave which has the figure of the old painting. It´s original name was Under a Wave of Kanagawa. You can see how the right boat is still on the top, but the left one is already sucked into the swirl. He managed very well to demonstrate the waves power with the fisherman´s fear, getting dragged into it. Into an infinite swirl with endless power, which could drag you down into the deep. The highest mountain of Japan in the back lets us measure the height of the wave which is so big and emerges more astonishment.

4 Original: “Und doch trägt in der Malerei eine ahnungsvolle Dunkelheit in manchen Fällen zur Wirkung eines Gemäldes bei: weil nämlich die gemalten Bilder denen in der Natur genau gleichen und weil auch in der Natur dunkle, verworrene, ungewisse Bilder eine größere Gewalt auf die Phantasie und damit auf die Erregung heftiger Leidenschaften ausüben, als dies die klareren und bestimmteren tun.” 9

If you ever were dragged from a small wave away you know the ambiguous power of it, the lip which pushes you down and the undertow of the wave which sucks you in. One feels so powerless, so small. On the other hand, looking from the outside at the great beauty of nature, makes one astonished and grateful. Kant said that if we want to achieve a `higher level´ it is necessary to get to a point where one is aware that he never will be able to measure objectively the object, but in his subjective view knows that he recognized a superior totality; this makes him achieve a higher level of himself, but only if one achieves to look at it without fear (Kant, 1790, p.275). Because we recognize this limitation, we gain in the end a positive effect, rethinking our own existence. Even with the looming fear of the ocean, still today there are people who confront giant waves, and it is very interesting that the old thoughts of the sublime still have value today. Confronting the heaviest feeling `fear´ which the human is capable to feel, fulfils us with power and strength. Alex Botelho, a Portuguese big wave surfer, describes the notion of the fear like this: “It is completely present, but it is possible to channel this very strong emotion into something positive that, instead of harming it, ultimately helps. Facing fear and going against the instinct to flee becomes an energy of strength to challenge ourselves even more.” (Botelho, 2019, p.21)5.

Fig.8. Alex Botelho, surfing, Praia Norte, Nazaré, 2016.

5 Original: “Está completamente presente mas é possível canalizar essa emoção fortíssima para algo positivo que, em vez de prejudicar, acaba por ajudar. Enfrentarmos o medo e irmos contra o instinto de fugirmos, transforma-se numa energia de força, para nos desafiarmos ainda mais”.

There still exist things which are not explainable, powers which arise out of the nowhere. Barnett Newman, the north American artist was the one who brought up one of the most important questions about the sublime in contemporary art: “The question that now arises is how, if we are living in a time without a legend or mythos that can be called sublime, if we refuse to admit any exaltation in pure relations, if we refuse to live in the abstract, how can we be creating a sublime art? ”(Newman, 1992, p.171). He concluded that we should free ourselves from all the old views of the sublime and make something new, because the old desire of something exalted remains: “Instead of making cathedrals out Christ, man, or ´life`, we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history.” (Newman, 1992, p.171).

1.2 Liminality

Today we have been in outer space and people have seen the earth from above. Astronauts have found a black hole which absorbs everything, even light. NASA has seen how the world interacts, for instance how the Saharan dust fertilizes the Amazon rainforest. Life comes and goes; everything seems to stay in our atmosphere, but we still have no new faith or explanation for the cycle of life. We still know less than ten percent about the ocean and maybe even less about of ourselves, who are made of seventy percent out of water. Marina Abramovic wrote in 1992 that artists are helping people to find their inner self today. And that they also help us to find something new in what we can believe in, because the old things have already passed away, and something new doesn’t exist yet. Newman said we are living in a time without myths and so we should make the sublime out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. And there is something big we can feel: liminality. The world limen is Latin and means threshold. It is used to describe liminal or borderline states in a psychological, physiological context where something is changing, states which are in between. Liminality can also describe simple things like the state between being awake and sleeping, but also the moment between life and death. Ethnologists use it to describe transition points in life, like becoming a man, getting baptized or getting married. Buddhist used liminality to search for in-between states by meditation, they call it `bardos´, when they practice the moment of the transition. In craniosacral therapy, a still point is a method to get fundamental pulsation, through a momentary suspension, back into its correct balance. It can describe moments between something, the moment where everything stands still, and nothing happens where everything is suspended, and one gains a mind changing effect. All these examples have in common that they are moments of important points in life where something changes, old things pass, and new ones can arise. Marina Abramovic searches for these moments where our mind comes to a gap and new things can arise: “I want to produce a mental jump, want to lead people to a point

12 where rational thinking fails, where the brain has to give up. The confusion which then arises in the brain is also an interval. Another world can open up.” (Abramovic, 1992, p. 236). There are many ways to experience liminality, some more dangerous ones than others but all of them are so hard to describe: this unique moment which seems so different, where periphery and threshold might be in the same place. Two months ago, I tried freediving. Before you dive you must come to an absolute still point. How one can reach a still point will be explained in the second chapter of the work. Our brain consumes a lot of oxygen so the less you think the longer you can hold your breath. Just fifteen meters under the sea and there it happened, a moment of total suspension, where the normal patterns might have gone lost. At once, myself seemed as two persons: an inner and an outer one, or just none. One teaching the other one, looking at it with a wisdom I became surprised by an amazing sensation. Being in a different space; time also seemed to be different or better. It seemed timeless, just like a big bubble of nothingness. The ice freediver Kiki Bosch says we have “a mind full of questions and a teacher in our soul” (Bosch, 2019). So, who knows what is really happening down there, in there? Maybe it’s possible to reconnect with this inner being or maybe it is just the result of the big nothingness. A moment of suspension, out of space or better to say in an inner space. A far more dangerous way to feel liminality was Bill Viola´s experience when he almost drowned:

I saw this beautiful green color and I saw these plants on the bottom, green plants, moving a little bit and some fish, just like landscape. I wasn´t frightened, I was fascinated and I didn´t know that it existed because I never put my head under the water. Then when (Viola’s uncle) grabbed me, it was like a shock, that he interrupted this vision. And the time, at that moment when I was under water- I mean it must have been like two seconds, three seconds- but it was like, oh yeah, it was endless (Viola, Torcelli, 1993, p.14).

He claims that this experience got embedded into his unconsciousness and so got the focus of his artistic work so it might have changed some mind patterns. Very interesting is that in his heavy liminal state he felt it as `endless´ experience for him. This sensation appears in many writings about liminality. T.S. Eliot described it as a trans-temporal awareness and said that “To be conscious is not to be in time” (Quasha, Stein, 2000, p. 214), like being in a bubble in a different world where everything goes quiet. Dante called it an eternal stillness; maybe like we imagine the universe eternally still. But Viola is not the only artist who has experienced liminality.

Gary Hill surfed many years in the Pacific Ocean and experienced liminality in the inside of a crushing wave; he called it an ecstatically sustained moment of being inside the state of “continuous wave“ (Quasha, Stein, 2000, p.215). His piece Learning Curve (fig. 9) is an eternal breaking wave which shows liminality as possibility of being. He wants us to get a positive effect gained through stillness, and he took it a little bit further as possibility of being, so he made this unique state endless and described the sensation with the following words: “special knowledge of a non-ordinary state attracts one back- you might say it calls one home-to an apparently marginal zone. We speak of the one who intentionally returns as an initiate, one who hears and responds: the beginner of the work.” (Gary Hill apud Quasha, Stein, 2000, p.215).

Fig. 9: Gary Hill, Learning Curve, 1993.

The state of being in a unique state of liminality might give you a sensation of totality. Freedivers talk about a sensation of being called home, being a part of something bigger. Kimi Werner6 from Hawaii claims it and Guillaume Nery7 describes himself hundred meters under the sea as a small point in the middle of the immense ocean and compares it with our planet being in the galaxy. He also says that we have a body memory which goes back millions of years, and that if we go back into the water and hold our breath we reconnect to our marine origins, with nature and so with ourselves. Quasha and Stein write in their article that the moment of liminality can be compared to an experience of totality when center and periphery are one in the present moment. The scientist Wallace Nichols experimented on the neural networks and claimed that

6 Kimi Werner: Freediver, artist and United States National Spearfishing Champion, from Maui, Hawaii. 7 Guillaume Nery: Multiple France and world record holder, maximum depth: one hundred twenty-six meters, from Nizza, France. 14 some experienced meditators can keep active two of them in the same moment which normally switch:

Recent studies have focused on the different neural networks that we use when focusing on things outside ourselves (the extrinsic network) and when focusing on self-reflection and emotion (the intrinsic, or default network). The brain usually switches between the two, but cognitive neuroscience researcher Zoran Josipovic discovered that experienced meditators could keep both networks active at the same time while they meditated. Doing so lowered the wall between self and environment, possibly with the effect of inspiring feelings of harmony with the world (Nichols, 2014, p.232).

Being deep in the sea, you first have to get into a deep point of stillness, but what is very interesting is that wingsuit flyers also have to be calm and still before they jump off a wall, a mountain or an airplane and bring up as well the sensation of totality: “I center my body and mind. I think it is something that takes time to learn. You need to be at one with yourself and (to) put all your energy into the one moment of leaping off the object, this way you are in tune 100 % with your surroundings and yourself and the present moment.” (Perry, 2017, p.7). Wholeness and being complete are sensations which are described from liminal states. Barnett Newman called a painting of his series Onement VI (fig.10). His paintings are divided with a line. He wants us to recognize that something happens. He drags us into his art to experience something different, the result of the big nothingness. Jean-Francois Lyotard described Barnett´s work like this:

Newman´s now which is no more than now is a stranger to consciousness and cannot be constituted by it. Rather, it is what dismantles consciousness, what deposes consciousness, it is what consciousness cannot formulate, and even what consciousness forgets in order to constitute itself. What we do not manage to formulate is that something happens, dass etwas geschieht. Or rather, and more simply, that it happens ... dass es geschieht. Not a major event in the media sense, not even a small event. Just an occurrence (Lyotard, 1988, p.28).

Fig.10. Barnett Newman, Onement VI, 1953.

Today we know from scientists like Wallace J. Nichols that when the brain comes to the absolute still point, the brain produces glucose and a disproportionate amount of oxygen. It’s like a reset for our brain to make new memories and new learning. So now we know something really happens. M.A. Greenstein concretizes what happens in the brain:

Drift is the freedom to wander in consciousness, and it´s quite possibly one of the most important keys to the actual functioning of or nervous system. Drifting takes us into the default-mode network: the network that´s active unless we are paying attention to something. In other words, it´s basically ‘online’ until we call on other areas of attention. And the default-mode network devours huge amounts of glucose and a disproportionate amount of oxygen (Greenstein apud Nichols, 2014, p.215).

It is amazing who would have thought about wasted time as something important? But yes, Albert Einstein said that creativity is the residue of wasted time. So, the bigger the gap might be the better our brain might work afterwards. Many studies have been made from neurologists on how our brain gets positive effects through rest; in those moments, our brain distributes memories and so can fuse together information from different areas and make new connections. So, if you pull yourself to the present moment, like a daydream, the brains default mode is incredibly active and so the brain is not really at rest. The best thing what we can do for ourselves is to rest, to bring the brain to a still point. What is very surprising is that especially in nature our brain can reinstate cognitive functions and even more through water: “And being around water provides a sensory- rich environment with enough `soft fascination´ to let our focused attention rest and the default-mode network kick in.” (Nichols, 2014, p.216). It seems like that we found something new to wonder about, something powerful but we changed the point of view

16 from outside to inside, to the center of ourselves. There are different ways to reach that state some more intense than the others, meditate or sleep, or if you want you can dive a little bit deeper. I asked Mafalda Oliveira8: “How is it being sixty-five meters under sea just by yourself ?” And she replied: “It´s just amazing, I love it, being down there alone just with myself.” (Oliveira, 24.03.19). The Sublime will overdue time, it was always there, and it will always be there. The only thing what changes is the way we look at it. In the old writings and paintings from the 15th to the 19th century it was often about nature and a supernatural force which was dark and scary. It was strongly attached to religion, the hierarchy of kings and gods. It mostly brings up the brave man who resists to the power of nature and looks at it without fear and so overpasses the threat and claims the feared object for himself. The concept still has value today. We saw the big wave surfer Botelho who proves the ideas which the old poets and philosophers wrote down a long time ago. He said that facing fear brings even more strength with it. So, it seems that the place of strongest scare can get the place of strongest power. In the 19th century, in times of industrialization, the people wanted to get away from religious beliefs, they didn´t want to think about things which they we not able to describe nor understand. Today we still can´t deny that there is something to wonder about, something bigger. This section discussed liminal states, a point where old things pass, and new ones can arise, a moment of transition. It’s very different from the vortex, but both have something in common; both can create a kind of force which transforms us: “The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered.” (Morley, 2010, p. 12). Liminal states are described as states where you drop into a marginal zone, into an endless time. Sensations of wholeness, being part of something bigger and reconnecting with ourselfes are described, its like we would blend with our surroundings in one present moment. The research found so many different possibilities to get there. Some more dangerous than others. The next chapter will open a way to experience a liminal state, but it is not something what is going to happen every day, it may occur if he manages to immerse

8 Mafalda Oliveira: Freediver, instructor, Portuguese record holder, max.depth: sixty five meters. 17 into himself. Immersion is a very old concept and can be transformative, so one has to really care where he is going to immerse into.

2. Immersive Environments

“Immersion can be an intellectually stimulating, process however, in the present as in the past, in most cases immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another. It is characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement what is happening.” (Grau, 2003, p.13). There are many possibilities to immerse; you can immerse into a book, a movie, a 3D virtual reality, into the ocean or into your mind. And all of them can make a change in our mental perception. Homer immersed us into the Odyssey; and took us on a voyage which seems like a metaphor for the search in life. Jules Verne wrote a book totally innovating for his time. He opened the future for us and took us 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea into a totally different world. It is fascinating how precisely he describes technical progresses which haven’t been common in this time like electricity or scuba diving. He described animals and countries so that people who would never have the possibility to travel and to dive can visualize precisely how it would be. And there exist many paintings which used immersive techniques like panorama and walls paintings covering entire rooms and ceilings. In Pompeii was found an immersive artwork from 60 B.C., the Great Frieze of the Dionysiac Mystery in the villa dei Misteri, (fig.11) in Pompeii.

Fig.11. Great Frieze of the Dionysiac Mystery, Pompeii, 60. B.C.

The paintings were extended to all walls of a room to create an immersive environment and a perfect illusion. The figures of the painting are very big and the entrance to the room is very small with a window where daylight entered. When you enter it is like a

19 story which begins on the left side of the room. You can see a lot of woman preparing themselves for a big mysterious wedding to the god Dionysus who is lying totally drunk in the arms of his mortal lover. The fresco brakes down the barrier between the observer and the artwork, through its size but also through the artists talent. The faces of the figures seem very real. Even though the name of the artist is lost, he had a big gift to express the emotions of the figures. You can see how some figures are frightened and others excited. In the time of the painting in Rome, religion and state were very allied and other religions were forbidden, like the Dionysus cult. So, this immersive artwork, appears to be a hidden chamber, where woman could come inside and imagine themselves to get married to a god. They wanted to open a window into another world, a forbidden world to the Dionysus cult. The wall painting from Pompeii looks like a precursor of the panoramas which became famous in the early 19th century. The word panorama is Greek and means `all view´. This view made it possible to bring a realistic visual presentation to the cities and its people. Walter Benjamin described the effect from panoramas like this: “The interesting thing about the panorama is to see the true city- a city inside a building. What stands in the windowless building is the truth. “ (Benjamin apud Grau, 1982, p.108) 9. The most popular panoramas were cities and patriotic battle scenes. It was a possibility to educate the people and document important events. The panoramas have been so realistic that once the Queen Charlotte claimed that she got seasick from the amount of water in the Panorama of the Grand Fleet at Spithead, 1791. The effect of a panorama was similar to IMAX cinema today especially when they were presented in a rotunda. They added natural lighting, sound effects and platforms which were moving, or stairs where the people got the feeling they would be walking in the painting. Anton von Werner tried very early to make panoramas to fully immerse the audience and achieve a virtual reality. The Battle of Sedan (fig.12) was one of the biggest immersive artworks of the 19th century.

9 “Das Wahre hat keine Fenster. Das Wahre sieht nirgends zum Universum hinaus. Und das Interesse an Panoramen ist, die wahre Stadt zu sehen....Die Stadt im Hause. Was im fensterlosen Hause steht, ist das Wahre.“ 20

Fig.12. Anton von Werner and 13 other Painters, The Battle of Sedan, 1883.

It shows the battle between the French and Preussen where both countries had heavy losses, in the end Preussen won and wanted to share this victory with the population. The painting measured 115x15 meters long which was presented in especially for it built rotunda in Berlin. The inside of the rotunda was a dark hall and only the painting was illuminated with natural light. To achieve a stronger immersive effect, you stood on a platform which was moving from one side to the other to picture the whole image. The panorama had a created through the photorealistic way of painting, a three- dimensional illusion. It hooked the observer as if it were almost reality, so much that the people felt like they were a part of the battle they won for their country. To make it even more realistic, military sounds were played at the exhibition. These virtual and acoustic techniques intended to give observers the feeling of being the object of political control and to create nationalist and patriotic feelings. But In the end the Panoramas couldn´t create a sublime feeling it was still not enough: “The spectator might be dazzled, he or she was not overwhelmed by the strongest emotions that the mind is capable of feeling, whether a sense of the purposefulness and harmony of everything or a sense of the infinite mystery and fragility of the universe. Static, silent, and somehow remote, even the most horrific battlefield panoramas failed to be understood as reality.” (Stafford & Terpak, 2001, p.318).

Fig.13. Monet, Water Lilies series, 1915-1917

Another panorama is the Water Lilies (fig.13) series from Monet. It is a wonderful immersion to the surface of water, Monet painted them in a distance from twenty to thirty centimeters. He added reflections of the sky to the water, neglecting the horizon. His attempt was to translate the viewer into his garden from the place wherever he was and fuse them with the panoramas. He attempted to make a sensation of loss of gravity with the help of the bird eye´s view perspective. Daylight was the only light which he wanted to be used, to make them even more real. Another artist of the Romantic era proposed an immersion in a very different kind of way. Caspar David Friedrich let the nature evoke in his painting Wanderer Above the

Fig. 14. Casper David Friedrich, Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818.

Sea of Fog (fig.14). His audience got immersed without the impact of size and an especially built rotunda. Rather he used the grandeur of nature in comparison to the human to evoke a sublime feeling. The fog in the distance immerses us in the eternity. He specialized his lightning technique, which adds a religious experience. Science and the bible always connected light as source of all living being: “Through Him all things where made, and without Him nothing was made that has been made. In Him was life, and that life was the light of men.” (Johannes, 1996, p.196) 10. Light is a principal attribute of immersive artworks. Already the painting in Pompei used a window from which light entered, the panoramas used light to make the

10 Original: “Alle Dinge sind durch dasselbe gemacht, und ohne dasselbe ist nichts gemacht, was gemacht ist. In ihm war das Leben, und das Leben war das Licht des Menschen“.

22 paintings more realistic. Churches use light as symbol for the essence of god when it enters through the stained glasses. The use of light might always be a reconnection to the divine. James Turrell´s work (fig.15) is influenced from the religion of the Quakers, a religion which has its root in Christianity. The Quakers bless light in its highest value, they go to a state of meditation and wait for their own light to come. The artist is more curious about the inside of the human: “Turrell´s sublime is compounded as we observe ourselves seeing. He allows us to look at light in such a way that we can see into ourselves through to the universe beyond.” (Turrell, 1990).

Fig. 15. James Turrell, The Light Inside, 1990.

Within his artworks Turrell wants us to find our own divine, our own place in the universe. He combines the sensation of entity and space : “I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity - that physical feeling and power that space can give.” (Turrell, 2020). And of course, there exist religious immersive artworks in a lot of churches. A very impressive one is the painting in the roof of the church the Nave of Sant ´Ignazio (fig.16) by Andrea Pozzo, from 1694.

Fig.16. Andrea Pozzo, Nave of Sant ‘Ignazio, 1694.

He managed to integrate the painting in the ceilings of the church so that it seemed to become one. The effect of the painting achieved lightness off the observer and gives him the feeling of being pulled up into heaven. So, if one might achieve the possibility to get pulled up one maybe also can get pulled down. Both the sky and the ocean are symbols of eternity, both seem limitless, but both have something in common both are blue. The Neurosurgeon Amir Vokshoor describes the color’s effect like this:

Due to its specific wavelength, the color blue is known to exert a calming, relaxing, yet energizing and thus stimulate a positive emotional response. In fact, the arousal mechanism stimulated by blue´s wavelengths correlates to the release for neurotransmitters thought to be associated with feelings of euphoria, joy, reward, and wellness related to the effects of dopamine. (Vokshoor apud Nichols, 2014, p.89).

He claims because we mainly evolved on a blue planet, immerging into a blue world already gives us a positive effect through its color, further the water helps that our `default mode´ kicks in and we relax even more. These two positive effects can get extended through the loss of weight: “From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.” (Jacques-Yves Cousteau apud Nichols, 2014, p.119). This is what a diver with air supply said about an immersion into the ocean. The first man who reached one hundred fifty meters in the category `no limits´ under the surface without oxygen (but with the help of weight) explained the way a freediver experiences the immersion: “A diver immerses under the surface to watch, a freediver to look into oneself” (Pelizarri, 2005, p.131)11.

11 Original: “El submarinista bucea para ver. El apneista lo hace para mirarse por dentro”.

And what are we are going to find in there, in us? Do we ever think about all the automatic stuff what is going on while we don’t even notice it? Around four thousand liters of blood is pumping through our heart and our one hundred-thousand-kilometer- long vessels every day. The blood transports gasses, nutrients, waste products, hormones and heat between our lunges and our tissues. The gas is in exchange from O2 to CO2 continuously which is transported through our blood. We breath in and out. A normal human should take six to twelve breaths in a minute most of us breath twice as much. This confuses our inner system, and we create diseases, allergies and much more. If we breath too fast our body changes from the normal mode to a survival mode. A moment of `stress´, adrenaline was perfect for us in the stone age where our body was in perfect condition to run away or hunt. We got totally focused on one thing and our muscles got stronger. In this mode the blood is floating to the muscles from the skin , our digestion stops and our heart is beating fast. A little bit of stress can help us to focus better, but today it happens that we stay in this mode, even if there is no real threat and breath still eighteen times a minute. So, we are always in a rush, just sitting on a chair, our heartbeat is too fast. This is the beat, the rhythm we created for us, and if we think about rhythms and look to the world we are living in, we notice that everything has a rhythm. Day and night, the seasons, the solar system, the moon. But we almost forgot about it. Indigenous women were used to leaving the villages together on full moon during their menstruation days. The entire village of the Achuar in Ecuador normally gets up when sun rises. Electric light has changed that. We don´t get up with sunrise anymore. All people have their own rhythm, we are not united anymore, nor with our people, nor with our planet, and not with ourselves. And so, we ask ourselves how could that happen? How could we forget about something so simple like breathing? In the Medieval times we were exposed to as many external influences in a lifetime as we are today in just one day and this might be one of the main reasons we changed how we breath. And you know there is no better place for turning off all this crumply stuff than in the depths of the ocean. But before you dive into the deep you first must immerse into yourself, find your own breathing rhythm and your own still point.

2.1. Still Point

The still point was already mentioned in the sub chapter 1.2. Now we will look how one can get there. Before you enter the deep you must be totally calm and relaxed, all tensions must be released in mind and body. Every little tension and thought costs oxygen and make your breath hold shorter. “The better you prepare yourself the better will be your dive.”(Oliveira, 2019). This preparation can be used in many areas of life. It can help to overpass challenges, like catching a big wave, winning a soccer match, or just over passing the stress in everyday life. It helps us to reconnect to ourselves be clearer and calmer in our decisions. Gary Hill says that surfers must get to a still point first, before they are able to enter in a barreled wave. (Gary Hill apud Quasha, Stein, 2000, p.215). The still point makes our mind clear, makes it possible to focus on our challenge without our patterns of fears or habits we have learned over the years. It might be a mental suspension of our normal self it’s the possibility to be always clear and more objective. There are many possibilities to get there, some prefer to listen to their favorite music to achieve a calm body and mind. Religion can help as well, mantras or prayers help us to let go of all unnecessary tensions in mind and body. Today the most famous relaxation techniques are visualization, autosuggestion, autogenic training, and body scans. To reach a state of still point, the most important tool for the preparation are the breathing techniques. Breathing is so natural that we forget about it, forget that is more than just a supply of oxygen. It´s a possibility to take control over ourselves over our minds which are full of patterns, fears and prejudices. Mario Albuquerque12 once told me that we can control everything in life through breathing. Mafalda Oliveira added another day: “fear can be controlled.”13 So, what is this magic tool which we all forgot to use? Breathing techniques are used in Yoga since ancient times, first writings about it are from 2000 B.C. where respiration, meditation and movements unify body and mind. And this quote just brings it one the point: “Breath is the tool that alone can bring together the body and mind. Illuminating both and bringing peace and calm.” (Farrell, 2006, p.23). The one who brought yoga and relaxation techniques into freediving is

12 Mario Albuquerque: Freediver, instructor, Portuguese record holder, max.depth: eighty meters 13 Original: “medo controla-se”. 26

Jacques Mayol and he was also the one who turned freediving into a mental sport. With this new approach he was the first person who reached a hundred meters under the surface in 1976. But if we look back on our respiratory system most of us should find that we don´t know how to breathe correctly. We already talked about the increment of our respiration frequency and further most of us use the upper chest, we breath fast, slow, most don’t have a breathing rhythm and so maybe no rhythm for our life. An actor once told me that he uses breathing techniques for changing the personalities he plays. So, imagine how you could change yours, just with something so simple like breathing. Even though we were born and breathing correctly which is so healthy for us and our body. The Stoa in Athens already wrote about the Oikeon of a newborn child 300 years B.C. It’s the basic instinct of the human to take care of themselves: “From birth onwards, external perception is connected to inner perception, or synaesthesis, which is consciousness of the self, and it is from this self-perception that the first active motion of the spirit arises…It consists of turning toward one´s own being, which one experiences as belonging to and to which one `dedicates´ oneself. This is oikeiosis.” (Grau, 2003 p.114). But today our world is so far away from ourselves, our lives are always in a rush, we forget about those basic instinct and forget to breathe correctly: “The most efficient is one which we already forgot to use, the belly breathing which babies do. Breathing correctly expels toxins from the body, massages the internal organs, releases tension, enables restful sleep, and restores the correct pH of the blood.” (Farrell, 2006, p.23). So, once you manage to focus on your belly breathing you will see that a great relaxation follows. To this you can add things like imagining your happy place or meditation techniques like the body scan where you let each body part deepen into the ground or Katabasis where the imagination of colors helps to relax. With autosuggestion training you use a kind of self talk where you for instance convince yourself that you are capable to manage a situation. Visualization is also a very helpful technique where you visualize every part of the dive during your preparation. It´s about finding our own breathing rhythm, so there your focus already turns inside. As we start to practice holding our breath in the preparation, we do something contrary to normal life; we start to watch ourselves as an observer. If we feel tensions in the body, we focus on them and relax exactly that point. If our mind disturbs us, we

27 learn to accept it: “A fundamental rule is that of being open with oneself, reaching a state of total introspection that annuls external stimuli and, above all, disturbing mental phenomena. Who relaxes is doing something to get out of the usual state of deconcentrating, mundane and little stiff.” (Pelizzari, 2005, p.120)14. It is a sport which is an interior research an introspection. Every time we go back to these techniques, relaxation gets easier, and the still point is reached faster. This is the basic tool to get long breath holds: “The balance between breathing, relaxing, time of apnea and well- being in the water is strong and, even if one wants to, can´t disrupt it. It is no use having a whale lung if you can´t relax. You can´t have a good performance without relaxation. And most of all, you can´t be well in the water if you aren´t well relaxed.” 15 (Dancini, 2005, p. 127). Once we start to hold our breath, we realize how important our own stillness becomes. After a while, the first contractions will start. This is an information from our body that our CO2 levels are rising but still doesn’t mean that we are low in oxygen. This doesn´t mean that we must stop our breath hold, this just means that we must relax even more look at them as an information and let them happen. But once you manage to get there its just like closing a window and immersing into yourself before you head down into the deep and disappear from the surface. To experience liminality it is fundamental to be in an absolute still point first. Today we know there are major psychological and physiological effects from relaxation. We gain emotional stability, memory and become more intellectual. Our concentration and attention get better as well as the diminishing of depression and anxiety. What is very important is that we know ourselves better and become more self- confident because we have learned to open ourselves and deal with the tumults which are coming up. There is also a physiological part which benefits from it, the metabolism gets slower as well as our breath rhythm and heartbeat. We sleep better, our arterial pressure gets regulated and in total we get more equilibrated.

14 Original: “Una regla fundamental es la de ser abierto con uno mismo, alcanzar un estado de total introspección que anule los estímulos externos y, sobre todo, los fenomenos mentales pertubadores. Quien se relaja esta haciendo algo para salir del estado habitual des desconcentracion, mundano y poco rígido”. 15 Original: “O elo entre respiração, relaxamento, tempo de apneia e bem-estar na água é forte e, mesmo que se queira, não pode ser rompido. Não adianta ter um pulmão de baleia, se não se consegue relaxar na água. Não se pode ter bom desempenho sem relaxamento. E, sobretudo, não se pode estar bem na água se não se estiver bem relaxado”. 28

2.2 Mind Game

“Empty your mind of all thoughts. Let your heart be at peace. Watch the turmoil of beings but contemplate their return.” (Farrell, 2006, p.45). Practicing static apnea, the mind game is focused just on you and your breath hold. In the beginning of your breath hold people say it looks like a big window you are looking through and you think you can hold your breath forever. But of course, we are still humans and our urge to breath will come. First it begins at our throat which is easy to accept, just let loose. After a while, your diaphragm will contract as a sign that your CO2 levels in the blood are rising. It’s an urge to exhale and it doesn´t mean certainly that you are low on oxygen yet. If you see them come you can see them like an inner timer. At the beginning you may surface after the first contraction and see that you are ok, but after a while you can take two, three, four etc. Like this you learn to listen to your inner body and count the contractions as a unique tool to see how long you can hold your breath. The more relaxed you are, the less oxygen you will use, the longer you will hold your breath. So, it’s a game with your mind and your relaxation, you learn to tolerance discomfort. If we go into the ocean of course the game is going to change, and the oxygen level won’t be our only preoccupation nor our only limitation. Diving into the deep the pressure rises, and we must equalize. “If the temperature remains constant, the volume of a gas is inversely proportional to the absolute pressure.” (Christen, 2018, p.41). We live in an atmospheric pressure with one bar, every ten meters we dive into the ocean one bar adds to that. So that at ten meters we already have twice as much pressure and half of our gas volume, at twenty meters you already have three bar and so on…our body persist to seventy percent of water, but we still have air spaces like our lungs, sinuses, ears and the mask. Apart from the lungs, we must put air into the spaces to balance the rising pressure. The ears are a very sensitive part of our body and must be equalized with care. And there again we must put our focus on our relaxation: “The soft overcomes the hard, the slow overcomes the fast.” (Farrell, 2006, p.81). The softer you get, the easier your body will accept the pressure and let you pass into the deep. And if we manage it’s a fusion with the ocean which Dancini describes so nicely:

The human body is adapted to the earth's atmosphere and pressure. Therefore, it encounters many difficulties when forced to withstand the 'weight' of various atmospheres and the high degree of hydrostatic pressure such as that caused by a freedive in the blue. However, when we undertake this adventure with one breath, with our own efforts, we are rewarded with a pure sense of union with the eternal immensity of nature (Dancini, 2005, p.20)16.

Another very important point is your rhythm, the way you use your fins, the way you pull yourself down on the rope, the rhythm of your equalization. The breathing rhythm brings you easier to your still point, the diving rhythm easier to your goal, it will help you to relax and will let you float down into the deep in an absolute stillness. You just must be there in the present moment float in the sea in your rhythm, without fear. Like this will conserve the most amount of oxygen, even a shark won´t take notice of you, because they search for anxiety. We all have our fears we all have learned from so many different sources to avoid things because others have told us so. Sharks were my big fear, why exactly it arose, I don´t know. Maybe it was the movie Jaws possibly something else. Others just panic if they hold their breath so far away from the surface without supply of fresh oxygen. Have you ever experienced your lack of oxygen ? When your lips get blue and you feel drunk. That’s what we should be afraid of and not man-made fears like sharks. With a good preparation we can `enter ourselves´; for me I can see two little white points covered into a black surrounding when I enter `freediving mode´. That’s the moment where everything starts. Where my heart rate goes down and I´m totally relaxed. After the duck dive the game starts… how long can you go? Well prepared to go deep, we remain just in our head, so it is just us and our head. No matter how deep we go its just us, my head and me. “By changing space, by leaving the space of one´s usual sensibilities the space of one´s usual sensibilities one enters into communication with a space that is physically innovating…For we do not change place we change our Nature.” (Bachelard, 1964).

16 Original: “O corpo humano está adaptado à atmosfera e pressão terrestres. Por isso, encontra muitas dificuldades quando obrigado a suportar o `peso´ de várias atmosferas e o alto grau de pressão hidrostática como a ocasionada por um mergulho livre no azul. No entanto, quando nos proporcionamos esta aventura com um só fôlego, com nosso própio esforço, somos recompensados com um puro sentimento de união com a imensidão eterna da natureza”.

It´s no surprise that this sensation happens because inside our body something really changes. If we just dive under in the surface a diving response starts, our heartbeat slows down from sixty, seventy beats per minute to thirty, forty and our peripheral vessels are squeezed so that the blood flows from the body extremities to the most important inner organs, to the heart, the lungs and brain. We share this diving response with our marine mammals who have the same instinct only stronger. It seems that diving really changes our nature, and so our sensation. And then on the way down into the deep: which fears can you avoid thinking off? I was always scared of sharks, so I always had to focus to not get eaten by one. Mafalda ones told me: “Don’t worry there is nothing around just some fish.” (Oliveira, 2019) and that was the first time I came to the fifteen meters. “Once we control ourselves we are free” (Mario Albuquerque, 2019). So I managed to control myself and as a result, free myself from my thoughts and fears and could experience what is unique, a liminal sensation. My mind was dismantled, the fear was gone, not actually but for some seconds, maybe a minute, which helped me to dive down into the deep. On the next dive I finally saw a huge around seven-meter-long basking shark. Luckily, he is vegetarian, and I was on the boat. His fin was huge and the most elegant movement I had ever seen. I really got caught in awe and wonder. Mafalda jumped in the water, later she told me her heart was bumping and she couldn’t see him, just a shadow, the visibility was bad, and then he took off. Afterwards we snorkeled around, strange knowing he was somewhere close. But no way of not going in the water, everybody was, so me too. I tried not to swim alone, I was ok, although the visibility was around three meters, he could have been so close. Just before going out of the water I took a small dive down, just to confirm I could. But every time I got back into the water the shark fear come back to me. And there something funny happened. Reaching twenty-two meters for the first time, Mafalda pointed to something behind me and so I thought there was it the big shark I was waiting for so long to see in the water. So, I swam over to her totally calm gave her a hug and wanted to watch the grandeur of nature with her. But there was nothing. It was the line she was pointing to. Up on the surface a big laugh attack overwhelmed me. Mafalda told me: “That was the deepest hug I ever had.” But what was curious is that my big fear to panic when the shark would come was dismantled. I was totally calm, so I would have been safe, sharks attack anxiety.

And then there was yesterday. Before our dive, a lot of dolphins appeared around the boat, the fear was dismantled. I felt like a part of something bigger, reconnected to nature. The sound of the dolphins seemed like from a higher dimension bringing a big message to me with a lot of power. And there was this big blue vista, which we were waiting for so long, the blue with visibility until ten meters and something more. The first dives where so relaxed. My mind game became so easy going down, it was like a game. There were no problems. Everything was easy and a school of big silver fish swam by which seemed like a dream, they were wonderful. I felt so connected with this beauty of the immense ocean. I dove down, saw the twenty-five meters, reached it in a last instant and swam back to the surface. The next dive the line was at thirty meters and I was in doubt to go back to 25 meters to reach it better or go further. This made me anxious, I felt I had pressure on my back and the mind game didn’t seem so easy. So once more¸ I took a long preparation and it was good I counted and I reached twenty- five meters still going easy, so I overpassed them. The Archimedes principle started so buoyancy turned and I fell a little bit more. Only once your lungs get squeezed more and more the bottom pulls you down, gravity changes and it is just the other way around. Finally, reaching nearly twenty-seven meters. Opening the eyes, I couldn´t see an end. Dark just dark. I felt like I was in another dimension, and there again I had the amazing sensation, a sensation of liminality, where everything stands still and everything blends, feeling one with the universe. You see just one color nothing else, it was a mix of blue, grey and green. Turning around the negative buoyancy is strong. You feel like you´re being pulled, sucked down into the deep. So, you must push hard, stroke by stroke. The Lingard was connected to the main line and felt heavy to take it back to the surface. Stroke by stroke. At around twenty meters Mafalda met me. I was still good, but it was still heavy going back. A little bit after, I felt my diaphragm bumping heavily. Too much, stroke by stroke pulling the rope. I came back to the surface Mafalda pushing my back on the last meters. Mario signaled to me: there was missing only a little bit. Uff, I made it but felt ashamed. I had a LMC (Loss of motor control) which is a lack of oxygen. I had pushed it too far, why? I also thought about my rhythm… did I hold it? No, I just rushed down. In everyday life we do that very often, but it has not so serious consequences. We are used to pushing hard, not recognizing when we should stop. We don´t look inside and check how our body is feeling, how much strength we have.

Which fears are manmade and which ones are real? And which fears are to be feared off. Taking care of oneself like the concept of oikeiosis. The kids come into the world with a self-protected instinct. They know when to sleep and to eat. We are very far away from ourselves sometimes. Putting limits too high. Self-awareness is what you read again and again in the AIDA (freediving) manuals. When you are stressed don’t dive! I was. But sometimes you should do exactly the contrary, you should push limits and overcome limits which shouldn’t be limitations for you. The mind game is a way to find out what you are capable of and what you are not, a way to find the real limits.

Only through knowledge can we use our potential capabilities to improve and eliminate the thoughts that limit us. Only through inner discipline, the increase of our self-esteem and confidence can we make better use of favorable external factors. We must learn to replace negative and alienating attitudes and thoughts with positive and creative processes. (Pelizzari, 2005, p.124)17.

Today I went back to the ocean and it was a nice day wind was calm the visibility wonderful. But Mafalda just said: “Winter is coming, and the basking sharks will come, too.” And there again my heart started beating and anxiety arose. I would have loved to run away. But no, I was there to take some last pictures. So, I shared this stupid anxiety and she advised me to take a dive on the line. Just fifteen meters but I was so happy afterwards that I could float and photograph again and felt the unity with this wonderful immense ocean. So again, I took an obstacle down, it becomes easier every time. And there was the LMC (Loss of Motor Control) the lack of oxygen which I also still had in my head. But this time I saw it differently. When the line was on twenty-four meters, I asked to put it on twenty meters. I took a short preparation, which worked perfectly, just some breaths and I was totally calm. I turned and dove down, it was wonderful. I felt my rhythm and the connection to the ocean. I opened my eyes at 20 meters, saw my safety diver passing under me and felt so indescribably good and swam back to the surface with a big smile. “Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So, it is incumbent on me to know myself, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its

17 Original: “Solo a través del conocimiento podemos utilizar nuestras capacidades potenciales para mejorar y eliminar los pensamientos que nos limitan. Solamente a través de la disciplina interior, del aumento de nuestra autoestima y de la confianza podremos hacer un uso mayor de los factores externos favorables. Debemos aprender a sustituir las actitudes y pensamientos negativos y alienantes por procesos positivos y creativos”. (Pelizzari, 2005, p.124). 33 subtleties, and it´s very atoms.” (Farrell, 2006, p.79). Sometimes one must take smaller steps and know what makes themselves happy. And one day you gain confidence to swim down into the deep without even thinking it could go wrong. In September 2020, was that day for me. After diving as Mafalda’s safety (support) diver for the first time, it was incredibly easy. So funny if I think of another person’s safety, I forget my fears and everything becomes so natural. Afterwards I made a dive down to the 25 meters, remaining super calm, super happy and reset. Now my final path just begins, I´m making the Aida 4 Assistant Instructor Certificate to reach my dream: the Aida diving instructor. But step, by step…

2.3 Focus

Focus, doesn´t seem so easy by everyday life. What is important, what is just a disturbing side effect which we have created ? What does really matter? What to do first. If you are down there in the deep everything is dark, looks the same, no beginning no end, no direction. But luckily, we have our line connecting us to the surface, what is marking our way back. Nothing more matters, nothing more we should put our focus on. This one line, the line to survival. Back to life back to newborn. There we learn to fail if we don´t focus in a very serious way. In life the consequences don´t seem so bad, but it takes our energy, makes us unhappy it costs our joy. Staying focused might be one of the most difficult targets in our contemporary life. As mentioned, we have many more external influences in one day than we had in a whole lifetime during the medieval times. (De Jong, 2019, p.27) We are so overloaded with possibilities that it is even hard to find out on what to focus on. We are one of the first generations who have the freedom to choose and at the same time it´s a freedom many cannot cope with. They start one thing and then continue another. Many people are always stressed out and put their body into a continuous `survival mode´. It is helpful if you need your full attention on something exterior like big wave surfers, or to hunt like in the stone age. The attention gets bundled on the exterior, a lot of adrenaline is spilled out, our body puts all its energy in its muscles, lungs and surveillance. Being under continuous heavy stress can produce neurochemicals like cortisol which can damage our bodies. But there exist two forms of stress, the negative and positive one. If we for example set ourselves a goal, the stress can help us to focus better and solve problems. The contrary case is if we let other people set goals for us, it can become negative and we can panic. Freedivers can use small doses of stress to focus better. A mix of the perfect relaxation and a very tiny amount of stress is the best way you can focus the most. If our adrenaline is going too high, our heartbeat raises, blood flow gets faster etc. and that costs a lot of oxygen. So, we just can make use of a very little amount of stress, which can help us to focus on the outside but on the same time we must relax as much as possible in our inside.

For all possible negative stress factors like physical, psychological, loss of equipment, ambient changes, perfect diving technique one should prepare themselves. Many freedivers visualize hundreds of times their dives before they go into the water, in every little step and think through solutions when negative thoughts or stress comes up. Being prepared for all stress factors can make you much more focused on your dive and in this way, you can use the positive stress to optimize your performance. (Lourenço, 2018, p.40) It is very important to keep your focus from the preparation of a dive until the end. You always should be clear how deep your next dive is going to be, on championships it isn´t possible to change the depth target on the same day, so you can focus on your dive. In freediving especially, the last meters are the most dangerous of the whole dive. In the last ten meters the pressure falls drastically. Down in the deep we get a benefit from the pressure and get more oxygen into the blood but on the way back the falling hydrostatic pressure also decreases the oxygen in our blood drastically. This is the reason why on very deep dives the safety divers accompany only the last thirty meters. On the last meters our focus should be positive. We should think about the smaller distance to the surface, stay focused on the line in front of us, never look up, and relax as much as possible. Many freedivers use autosuggestion, a self talk to help themselves to stay calm and focused. Some just use positive thoughts. Others focus on the negative thoughts, try to relax, release them and replace them with positive thoughts and so reframe them into a new context. That’s a kind of modification of our psychological condition which is very powerful and can help to stay focused. This is a wonderful way to support our own healing process and to increase our self esteem and self confidence. The best dives are when the athlete gets in a total flow, when he is in a kind of `autopilot´ mode, when his skills and his concentration are equally balanced (Lourenço, 2018). If we managed to focus on the way up, we are open to receive the pleasure which the beauty of the sea provides, sometimes in the fish swimming by or in the endless blue which keeps our awe and wonder. The wall paintings in churches wanted to create an immersive sensation, wanted to give us the feeling to be connected to heaven. In the sea it becomes reality. Immersion can be transformative, and it is quiet an old idea. It was used to influence people with

36 religion, patriotic feeling or just to show them a world they would never be able to see. Today the world is full of immersive possibilities. There are so many distractions. The 21st century overwhelms us with influences and takes us away from our own inner being, which not only brought us knowledge. It also brought up stress, turned us away from ourselves and messed us up. We lost the knowledge about our breathing rhythm, which is so important for us. Freediving is a very powerful tool to bring us back to us, to know us better, to take control over us and over our minds. We can turn the immersion from the exterior world to the interior, directly into us. To find our still point is a way to know us better, we will watch our breath, our tumults, take control over it and be able calm us down in seconds. We can include it in everyday life and can get amazing psychological and physiological effects through it. The mind game is a way to find out which are our real limits, which ones we´ll have to take down and which one we must respect even more. To focus is very important but we have a hard time to execute it in the contemporary time. Training helps us to focus on the important things. With exercises and self-awareness, we get more and more comfortable in the water. If we understand how it works, it’s possible almost for everybody to go down into the deep and overpass his own obstacles. And down there you might get into a liminal state and experience something that is unique which opens a gap and might open a different world for you.

3. Apnea. A liminal experience under the surface of the ocean

Apnea is at the same time the title of the dissertation, and the methodology to arrive to myself which I apply in real life. The word apnea comes from the Greek word a- pnoia and means without breathing. The word apnea makes no reference to the aquatic sport but in the common language it is used to name freediving. It’s the oldest form of diving and has no equipment of respiration. Today apnea is a sport which is well regulated and has well defined specializations. There exists a register of records, official competitions and a world championship. Primarily as a source of hunting, apnea has been practiced for thousands of years but as well for commerce. Around 7000-10.000 years ago, first seashell divers were known in the Baltic sea. Close to Euphrates and Tigris have been found seashells from 4.500.B.C. which could have only been collected by immersion. In the Mediterranean the marks of the practice of apnea can be found easily as in Greece, there you can find old paintings and myths about the fisher Glauco from the Minoan Era.

Fig.17. Gravure Skandalopetra, Greece, 1800.

The gravure from around 1800 (fig.17) shows sponge collectors, who used stones to immerse themselves. They dove to thirty meters under the surface and could hold their breath between three to five minutes. The trading of purpura, the color which was

39 needed to tint the tunics from the kings and popes could only be collected through immersion. Aristoteles brought up in his writings divers which destroyed the defenses of enemy ships. In the roman era around 4 B.C. there already existed official subaquatic troops who were a submarine defense, which released anchors that got stuck and made war actions underwater. In India they have been diving for pearls and from Polynesia exists stories from the Spanish Sailors who wrote about the impressive diving capacities from the natives who could rescue traces from the bottom of the sea. One of the most famous ones might be the female divers the Amas from Japan and Korea which fish the same way as 2000 years ago. They dive naked in water temperatures around ten degrees and around eight hours per day with a line and a box to collect the catch. On the line they put a stone which they use to immerse themselves fast into the deep. Another legend from Greece is Haggi Stati who dived in 1913 to seventy-six meters and held his breath for over three minutes, to release the anchor of a ship. But this story might have been seen like a myth because when in 1949 Raimond Bucher dived to thirty meters and was considered the deepest freediving man on earth. In 1961 Enzo Maiorca broke the mysterious number of fifty meters under the surface. In this time the doctors thought that the thorax of the human would collapse because of the hydrostatic pressure when they go too deep. Enzo´s new records made them rewrite a big part of their medical research, but the doctors had to wait until 1974 where they found out about the `mammalian dive response´ from a study on Jacques Mayol. There are various triggers which can activate the mammalian dive response. The dive response helps us to conserve oxygen, to use it more efficiently and protects our lungs from barotrauma. If we just immerse our face into cold water, we experience bradycardia, our heartbeat gets lower and our metabolism slows down. Through peripheral vasoconstriction, blood is running to the important organs like the heart and brain. If the pressure rises the `blood shift´ gets activated and protects our lungs from barotrauma; `collapsing´. The vessels in our torso get filled with more blood through the vasoconstriction which makes the space of air smaller and the thorax more flexible and further compressible.

The ‘spleen effect´ is a reservoir of red blood cells which gets activated through rising CO2 during apnea and so preserves more oxygen for the body. In Indonesia the `sea gypsies´ are bringing up new questions, their spleen is up to fifty percent larger than the next folk. There exist stories that they can hold their breath for over ten minutes during dives down to sixty meters. We have the diving response in common with our marine mammals like whales and dolphins and inherited it from our marine origins. This is the reason why surprising long breath holds can´t always be repeated on land. The more often we practice apnea the more the dive response will be activated. In 1976 the first one who broke the magic number of one hundred meters was Jacques Mayol who was also the one who changed apnea diving into a mental sport, with the help of old yoga and relaxation practices, which was already described in the subchapter 2.1. Enzo Maiorca and Jacques Mayol were also the inspiration for the movie The big blue from Luc Besson. Today apnea has many different categories; here I just name the Aida records from the categories I practice. Alexey Molchanov holds the record in constant weight with 130 meters and Stéphane Mifsud held his breath for 11:35 minutes in static apnea. The human body is better adapted to the ocean than we thought. The human blood and the ocean are compared in the book from Pelizzari in a chemical context. Our blood transports not only oxygen, but it also has a strong concentration of salt, like the ocean. Our blood provides our tissues with nutrients and oxygen. The ocean feeds sea animals with plankton and oxygen which is dissolved in the seawater. Dr. Brooks claims “The life that was born in the sea could not start the path on the earth until the forces of evolution failed to create an organism capable of carrying a piece of the ocean with it. ” (Brooks apud Pelizzari, p.73, 2005)18. And so, he claims that we remember in our deepest inside this peace of ocean: "A shred of sea. In the depths of his genetic memory, man still has the memory of his aquatic past.” (Brooks apud Pelizzari,2005, p.73)19.

18 Original: “La vida que nació en el mar no pudo iniciar el camino de la tierra hasta que las fuerzas de la evolución no consiguieron crear un organismo capaz de portar consigo un pedazo do océano.” 19 Original: “un jirón de mar. En lo mas profundo de su memoria genética, el hombre posee todavía el recuerdo de su pasado acuático.” 41

An adult consists of seventy percent of water, a child up to eighty- and a embryo up to ninety nine percent and floats in amniotic liquid. Jacques Mayol already said “in us, there is a true ocean” (Mayol apud Pelizzari, 2005,p.72)20. A baby, nine months in the womb of the mother is in Apnea it doesn´t breath instead it gets its oxygen supply through the blood, within the umbilical cord. In the last weeks an embryo will practice the breathing reflex inhaling the amniotic fluid. It´s heart goes through an impressive development, first is has two cavities like a fish, then three like a reptile and finally four like a mammal. There exist many tribes in the Amazon, in Australia, New Zealand and Panama where babies have been brought to life in water. They claim that it is softer for the baby and brings him from one liquid world to another, instead of a hard dry one. When a baby is born it can swim and hold its breath without problem. But as time passes they forget, get anxious about it and must learn to swim again.

20 Original: “En nosotros hay un verdadero océano.” 42

3.1 Description of the project

Two years ago, I came to Portugal with the urge to make a project about the ocean. Growing up close to the sea in Crete , Greece, I learned to dive at the age of three. My older brother and I always threw coins into the pools and recollected them from the bottom. We always spent a lot of time also in the ocean and growing older; the coins turned into seashells, which I caught for my friends from the bottom of the ocean. At the age of ten we left the beautiful island, and we went back to Germany. Being far from the ocean in Germany it might have been seeing Jaws at a young age that created a personal horror and a big fear from sharks, so badly that I could not even look at them. So, I truly forgot about my connection to the ocean and had to begin from the start. While searching for the theme of my thesis in Portugal, I heard Homer´s novel Odyssey and was impressed from the sea monster Skylla. Searching further I found them everywhere, the maps from Olaus Magnus, the monsters in the books from Jule Verne, in Moby Dick and a lot of sea gods like Neptune and much more. It was hard in the beginning even searching the web about sea monsters, it terrorized me because there always appeared a shark which frightened me. But there was this amazement for the theme like Jules Verne´s book which fascinated me with its clear descriptions from the underwater world and I read it in just a few days. I started to recognize that we are turning the sea into a monster since very ancient times. The pictures of my first project which I made were mostly multiple exposures. (fig. 18-23). Trying to connect the myths I found in the novels with the photographs I took.

Fig. 18-23. Janna Nadjejda, Okeanos, 2018.

In total the work Okeanos contains 10 photographs, they were shot with a Canon 6D and a 24-70, 2.8 Lens. The multiple exposures were made directly in the camera and not in a postproduction. They are digital and the colors where optimized with Lightroom. For the final presentation of the first semester the photographs were printed in a 30 cm x 45 cm format. Unfortunately, the pictures where very different and the concept of the sea monsters couldn´t combine very well with my colorful pictures. For the next project I grabbed my camera and put it into my underwater housing. It is a plastic bag which I could take until five meters under the surface. I called the project Immersion. It was a time where I started to take surf classes and recognized that there was a positive effect form surfing; I also found out that there exist surf therapies. My first impressive experience with the ocean was in March 2018 when I went to the Azores to swim with wild dolphins. We were sitting on a boat quiet far from the coast and waiting for dolphins when they passed under our boat, we had to slide quietly in groups of two people into the water to not disturb them because they would rush away. I was scared to death, but I let myself fall from the boat into the sea. I breathed heavily and squeezed my husband´s hand. But when I noticed the light which was falling into the sea it was so beautiful it disappeared in the endless ocean like music and there a small dolphin passed through. Many call it a life changing experience, I think of a wonderful quote from Melville who described what happens if you look into the open sea:

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwrapped primal world glided to and from before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom and spoke it; and there fore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God.21 (Melville, 1956, P.482).

For the project Immersion (fig. 24-29) I searched for artists and books; the first one I found was Gary Hill who talked about the positive effect of surfing as sublime experience and his project The Learning Curve. The work Immersion (fig.24-29) was photographed with a Canon 6D and a 50mm, 1.8 lens in an Ewa Marine underwater housing, which I could take until five meters under the surface. They are digital and the colors were optimized with Adobe Lightroom. For the final presentation of the second semester the photographs where unified as a slideshow with adobe premiere and music from Wizzkid and Tafti. The practical part of the project worked well but didn´t combine very well with the theoretical part of the positive side effect through the sublime.

21 Original: “ Die See hatte seinen vergänglichen Leib höhnisch verschont, aber das unvergängliche seiner Seele war in ihr untergegangen, wohl eher lebend hinabgefahren in zauberische Tiefen, wo seltsame Gebilde aus einer unverstellten Urwelt vor seinem blicklos schauernden Auge hin und wieder huschten und Weisheit, das raffende Meerweib, ihm ihre gehorteten Schätze offenbarte; und in diesem Reich fühlloser Lust, zeitlos ewige Jugend sah Pip, die unzähligen, göttlich allgegenwärtigen Korallensterne, die sich in gewaltigen Ringen aus dem Firmament den Wasser hoben. Er sah, wie Gottes Fuß den Webstuhl trat, und er verschwieg es nicht und deshalb nannten die Männer ihn toll. So ist des Menschen Wahn des Himmels Sinn; und hat der Mensch erst alle sterbliche Vernunft hinter sich gelassen, dann kommt ihm am Ende seiner Wanderschaft jenes himmlische Wissen, das den Verstande als Wirrnis und Wahn erscheint; unberührt von Lust und Leid, lebt er gleichmütig dahin, wandelos wie Gott...“

Fig.24-29. Janna Nadjejda, Immersion, 2018.

When I found the concepts from Burke and Kant, they where the ones who brought guidance and clarified the point how something sublime could gain a positive effect. How one can overcome fears and transform them into our own power. Even the big wave surfer Botelho says how he can overcome fear and if he faces it, he gets stronger. For the next project I went to the biggest waves of the world around twenty meters high at Praia Norte, Nazare. Here, world records have been accomplished and luckily no deaths yet. Even though the bay was once called the widow maker. There was the first time where the images and the concept of my project combined perfectly. I photographed the project Kimata (fig.30-35) with the Canon 5DMark IV and a 70- 200mm, 4.0 Lens. The images are digital and were optimized with Adobe Lightroom. The colors of work were inspired from the painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (fig.14) to underline the sublime sensation. I presented at the end of the third semester

46 twenty photographs in the size of 30 cm x 45 cm. The fear of the sublime was clearly shown, the unknown, the unsharp and the endless. And none the less, the pictures bring a great beauty with them. They show the beauty of the ocean and go further, they start to transform if you look at them, create illusions from your own point of view.

Fig. 30-35: Janna Nadjejda, Kimata, 2019.

To connect even more to the ocean, I finally decided to immerse into it. In 2019, I made the Padi Open Water diving license. With this you are licensed to go until twenty meters, however I only reached sixteen meters. Before the first time I entered in the water I panicked, I thought I couldn´t breath, but then I let myself fall inside and discover the underwater world. Always looking out for sharks I was still nervous but also thought about Jules Verne and his beautiful descriptions of the underwater world. I changed my nature. I was floating. Breath in, you float upwards breath out, you sink. The seagrass was beautiful and following the currents. It was a magical experience, but also really exhausting. Bachelard says the deep water brings up the unconsciousness. Something happens with one in the deep, something changes. It was the first step for me

47 to get back into the water, but I was really disturbed from all the technical stuff. There was so much to think about, diving time, depth, surface intervals, is enough air in the bottle, is it working, etc. I was never good in math, always more of an intuitional person. My search continued and one day I landed on the internet page of the Spot-Freedive team. It´s the only Portuguese school who teaches apnea. The owners are Mafalda Oliveira and Mario Albuquerque they have been teaching for eleven years and practice the sport for over fifteen years. The first day of the Aida Freediver 2 course I had the first impressive sensation. It´s one day training in the pool (static apnea) and two days in the ocean, the maximum depth is 20 meters and the minimum for getting the certificate is fifteen meters. The depth is lower because of the hard conditions in Portugal, the water is cold and there are some days with bad visibility which can make it very scary. The unknown is the worst. So back to the sensation. The first thing what you learn is to stop thinking and to relax completely. The less you use your body, the less oxygen you are going to waste. Who would have thought that thoughts waste oxygen? The first breath hold was so easy that it shocked me. I remember opening my eyes in the pool and having the sensation of looking out of a window and holding my breath forever. This scared me, so I stopped. The measured time was also not bad, so I ended the static apnea session with two twenty minutes. The next day in the ocean the visibility was quite good, the first attempts were not so hard it was around eight meters and went quite well. A new exercise of diving down with closed eyes brought up confusion. There I first caught myself, I was not able anymore to look out for sharks and I was just by myself alone with my mind. The mind game had started. It was that day where I had this metaphysical experience which made me continue my research about apnea. It was also the day where I unluckily or luckily broke my underwater housing (Ewa Marine, the plastic bag) and crashed my camera. Luckily, the insurance paid, and I bought from it my Fisheye 8-15 /4.0. To get a new underwater housing it almost took me half a year. It´s called Nimar Underwater housing for the Canon 5DMark4 and has a Dome port for the fisheye which I can take until 60 meters under the surface. My diving school gave me unbelievable support. They let me use their underwater housing, took me to diving excursions, gave me the diving equipment and taught me to

48 photograph underwater in exchange for pictures. Getting an underwater photographer start was more difficult than I thought. This leads me to think about the difficulties and challenges the first underwater photographers have gone through. In the year 1856, a man called William Thomson, already wanted to explore the conditions of buildings which where under water. He sank the camera five meters and exposed ten minutes, but the case became filled with water (fig.36). The developed negative was not sharp and had no big resonance, although its beautiful and looks so mystical.

Fig.36. William Thomson, first underwater photograph, 1856.

The French biologist Boutan invented underwater photography for the use of science and not for art. He wanted to research the natural living space of animals for his studies, therefore he also learned to dive. The first real image was shot in 1893 in the Bay of Banyuls-sur-Mer (fig.37).

Fig.37. Boutan. one of the first underwaterphotograhs, 1893.

On the image you can see the diver and mechanic Joseph David who helped Boutan (fig.37). Afterwards his brother constructed for him a brass case for a plate camera. Because of the low sensitivity they had to expose ten to thirty minutes. To manage the time, they had a line going up to a small boat and like this they were interchanging the time with pulling on the line. Boutan recognized very fast how important the lightning was for his underwater photography. So, he used the invention of a friend, a Magnesium lamp, the first underwater flash. Heavy weights hold a wooden Barrel on the ground of the sea, filled with oxygen made a combustion processes possible. On top of it there was a spiritus lamp in which they blew magnesium powder with a gum balloon. As soon at it burned, they got for a second a big light. It worked but was complicated. Three years after they tried a totally different way, they constructed waterproof plates, so they could change them underwater. This obviously was a wrong way. There was another attempt in 1898, which made snap shots possible, but the change of the plates underwater was very tough. Electric carbon arc lamps could give enough light to make shots in fifty meters under the ocean. They sank the camera and the pictures were captured with remote initiation. The pioneer work of founder Louis Boutan is the base of today ́s underwater photography to be free to move, both the camera and the diver. The first two underwater photographs where also a big inspiration of my work Apnea. There I was, over a hundred years later and struggling to get some pictures. Diving holding my breath, equalizing, and framing a shot was complicated, sometimes I got totally confused, crashed somebody, and recognized that I had to learn to dive better first. This brought me to the Aida Freediving Course 3. I managed to hold my breath for three and a half minutes and dived to twenty-five meters on a single breath. Since than it didn´t become easy but it became possible. The pictures (fig.38-70) are shot in September 2019 and March 2020 when I finally got my underwater housing. The images are shot close to the surface until a depth of fifteen meters. The whole procedure taking a picture is: preparation of the housing, vacuum test that there is no leak, preparation of myself, relaxation, breathing technique, first relaxed dives to let your body know you are back in the water and get the assistance of our natural diving response, from our marine origin. And then the shooting; before each breath hold a short preparation, relaxation, breath hold, duck dive, submersion, waiting for the model, shot, swim back to the surface, recover breathing.

On the last three shooting days I could control the procedure a lot better, so I have more details about the shots. For the shot with the perspective looking up to the diver from the bottom of sea (fig.65,66) we coordinated well with Mafalda how we are going to manage the shot. We took together the preparation and when I was ready, I headed down first. As soon as I reached the end of the line, I held tightly on it with my legs, so I had the hands free to change the exposure. This occurred just seconds after Mafalda headed down, so I could get the perfect shot from her. We were lucky and only needed two attempts to get it. Right after this shooting we swam to the wreck which is around minus thirteen meters. There it was sometimes very funny, we were talking on the surface where we are going to meet down in the deep, which direction she and I would swim to, to get a good shot. I´m a professional photographer for many years, but I´m used to talking with the person I´m shooting. This was a new experience. Preparing with closed eyes, duck diving and then at the bottom alone, turning around and searching for Mafalda. When she appeared, I pressed the series button to get as many shots as possible. Afterwards, on the surface, we laughed because the shots we planned were on the other end of the wreck, not as planned. But anyway, the image with the fish (fig.50) came out like planned and the image passing through the corals (fig.48) was a lucky one. The last photograph of the book (fig. 68) I took when she headed up from the wreck back to the surface. Close to this location are the stones at around five meters where I took the last image (fig.51) on that day. The next day I struggled again with my fears. Mafalda said that the basking sharks would appear soon. Being nervous I could not concentrate on my images, so she recommended me to take some dives on the line. Down at fifteen meters with closed eyes, I got over it and was happy again with lots of energy. I was able to take the deepest picture from the end of the line at fifteen meters (fig.67). In winter, the freediving school closes, due to rough conditions of the ocean. In March 2020 I took the last pictures of the book. It was a wonderful sunny day with a visibility with over ten meters. The dive was close to shore and I felt like I was in a big swimming pool. On that day I took the images (fig.52-57), almost all of them were shot very close from the surface. Only two of them were taken in the deep waters, at approximately 13 meters (fig. 55,56). It was a wonderful last shooting day and I finally really felt like an underwater photographer.

The project took me on a long journey I was very far away from the ocean when I reached Portugal; but with each semester, I got a little bit closer to the ocean until I finally immersed into it. The final project Ocean Immersion (fig.38-70) is presented in a book. The format is a small square 20 x 20 cm with a hard cover. The format was chosen because on a mysterious way some of the taken images changed their size during the shootings. I´m still wondering if it happened through the pressure (they changed size 12 meters under the surface), or I just copied the cards wrong. I always used a backup on CF card in maximum resolution and one SD Card in minimum resolution. In the end I think the circumstances made me take the right choice. The small format will help me to distribute the book easier. The smaller size lowers the print costs and so of course I´ll be able to sell it at a lower price. The book was designed in cooperation with the graphic design studio Ocyano22. On the cover is an image of the rope which disappears in the deep blue (fig.38). Over it is the title of the work Ocean Immersion with my name and a freediver designed as a logo. The book contains a short text and twenty-three photographs, almost all of them are double-sided and placed on a dark blue background to let the viewer immerse totally into the images. The first page of the book is white and has the dedication “Για Δελφίνα” it is Greek and is dedicated to a very special soul. The slogan “dive in and enjoy the ride” (fig.39) prepares us for the water journey. On the next page are (fig.40) two quotes from famous freedivers who describe this unique feeling of freediving: “A diver immerses under the surface to watch, a freediver to look into oneself.” (Pelizzari, 2014, p.128)23 and “Be free as a wild animal. Dive naked like a dolphin, into the abyss of the sea and fly high into the infinite blue of the sky and glide, silent, like an albatross in the petty world of man; to become air, to be immersed in water and to merge with it and to find yourself again.” (Jacques Mayol apud Dancini, 2005, p.20)24. For the next three pages I wrote some words to imagine yourself in a sensational and physical way diving into the wonderful deep ocean (fig.41-44):

22 http://ocyano.pt/ 23 Original: “El submarinista bucea para ver. El apneista lo hace para mirarse por dentro.” 24 Original: “Ser livre como um animal selvagem. Mergulhar nu, como um golfinho, no abismo do mar e voar bem alto no azul infinito do ceu e planar, silencioso, como um albatroz no mundo mesquinho do homem; tornar-se ar, imergir-se na agua e com ela fundir-se e reecontrar-se.”

Breathe in, Breathe out. We are there in the open sea, preparing ourselves to immerse into the underwater world. We have a wetsuit on, diving goggles and long fins. It ś deep very deep, some miles away from the coast. For some of you it might seem very scary to immerse in there, just into the open sea. But we are protected from our marine origins, we have a mammalian dive response which protects us in the deep. We have this in common with whales and dolphins in a reduced form. The more often we immerse our face into water, more often our triggers of the mammalian dive response get activated. It slows down our metabolism, lowers our heart rate and helps us to use oxygen more efficiently. And we still have a part of ocean in us, we persist to seventy percent of water, an embryo to ninety nine percent and when we are born, we can hold our breath like a dolphin. Lying there in the water we prepare ourselves to hold our breath. The more relaxed we are, the less oxygen we need. Because every tension and every thought costs oxygen. So, we breathe deeply and slowly into our belly. Through the belly breathing we release our tensions, control our fears, and fill up our body with fresh oxygen. We observe and scan through our body. It is a way to meet us, Pelizzari described the inner research: “A fundamental rule is that of being open with oneself, reaching a state of total intro-section that annuls external stimuli and, above all, disturbing mental phenomena. Who relaxes is doing something to get out of the usual state of deconcentrating, mundane and little stiff.” (Pelizzari, 2005, p.120) From the big toe, in little steps up to the head, we search for tensions and transform them into lightness. We just let go. Everything what is bothering us, everything unnecessary in this one moment. It ́s the way to our own Still Point. A moment when our mind is clear, and we can focus on our challenge, on the outside, without fear or the habits we have learned over the years. We breathe and connect totally with ourselves, dive into ourselves and the outer world erases. Once there, we take a deep breath in and hold our breath. We close our eyes and turn around. We duck dive to enter the underwater world. We start to descent, moving our fins slowly. We hold on to the line to find our way down. Pull with one hand and then the other one, we equalize our ears and fall a bit deeper. We focus on our inside. We stay just in our head. We are just there in this one moment with ourselves. We go deeper and equalize, the pressure is rising, Dancini described the sensation so nicely: “...when we undertake this adventure with one breath, with our own efforts, we are rewarded with a pure sense of union with the eternal immensity of nature.” (Dancini, 2005, p.20) So, we dive into that peaceful world, equalize, and unite with the ocean. We swim and equalize in our own rhythm, which helps us to relax and float down into the deep in an absolute stillness. Without fear, we just float down into the deep. The only barrier we are going to find there is ourselves, just there in us. Maybe our mind will drag us away. It’s a Mind Game. So, we tell ourselves that we are capable. Mário Albuquerque, who reached 80 meters under the surface in one breath, said something very wise: “Once we control ourselves, we are free.” (Alburquerque, 2019) And so, we glide deeper. Step by step. Just by ourselves. We feel the silence, the peace. Our heartbeat slows down. Almost like hibernating. So peaceful. Almost like letting your body behind. Being there just with yourself. Your Soul. Or whatever that might be. Everything disappears. Every stress. You just let loose.

Let go. Of fear. Of tension. Of everything. Gliding deeper is getting easier. The air in your lungs gets compressed because of the hydrostatic pressure. So, you start to fall. Out of space into freedom. Reaching down at the end of the line. You open your eyes. And it ́s just one. One color. Just like it would be in the universe. It ́s quiet, peaceful – it ́s timelessness. Freedom of space, outside and inside. Everything blends. You unite with yourself, feel complete. Feel one with the huge ocean. Just a piece of it. You reconnect to this place where we all once came from. A moment of suspension. Old things can pass, and new ones arise. Something is changing, our brain resets. A liminal sensation, a borderline state. A sensation which reminds on Barnett Newman ́s words:“...it is what dismantles consciousness, what deposes consciousness, it is what consciousness cannot formulate, and even what consciousness forgets in order to constitute itself. What we do not manage to formulate it is that something happens...” (Lyotard, 1988, p.28) Down there in the deep, we get more oxygen in the blood, because of the high pressure. More oxygen passes through our tissues. We feel good and strong and just wonderful. A place to stay just there in this one present moment. But we are still humans and we have an urge to breathe. So, we turn around. And swim back towards the surface. We are negatively buoyant. We push harder to swim back. And Focus. Just on the line. The line to survival. Which will bring us back. Back to a new life, to a new breath. “Nothing penetrates deeper than the breath or is more persuasive. Immediately you will object that the moving breath is like the waves of the sea. But what of retention of the breath? Breathing stops. Is not the cessation of the movement of breath, the life-giving force, the greatest point of stillness imaginable?” (Farrell, 2006, p.33) You see the endless blue, an eternity. And there your safety diver meets you halfway. She looks you in the eyes and brings you back safely. Fish swim by. The pressure is falling, so is the oxygen in your blood. We feel our diaphragm bumping. It doesn’t mean we are low on oxygen yet. It means we have an urge to exhale. So, we tolerate this discomfort and relax into it. And focus. On the present moment and enjoy the ride. The sun comes closer as it breaks through the surface. The last meters you start floating and you can stop moving. You can let yourself being dragged up into a new world (Nadjejda, 2020, p. 3-8).

And on last page with text are just the words: “And breathe” in big bold letters (fig.44). The book is a small immersion into the sea world. It is a portrait of the practice of freediving. We are taken in written words and photography on twenty-three pages to the bottom of the ocean, one can see in a real and concrete way the immersive concepts which were described in the subchapters 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3. And I want the audience to experience how it might be getting transformed from the power of the unknown and endless which was described in the subchapter 1.2. I think it´s a very valid experience which each one of us could make. Conquering our brain, overpassing our limits without losing the focus of self-awareness is a gift which we are not protecting in our busy stressful life in the cities.

The first two pictures show the preparation of a freediver who focus on calming himself down. First you take down every little, small tension in mind and body, there have been described many forms in chapter 2.1, but in the end, everyone must find his own technique to get to her still point first. The next picture is taken after the duck dive which helps us to turn upside down to head down into the deep. First the viewer must get used to the new environment. The freediver passes through human traces of a ship, artificial walls where marine life has claimed back its environment and built a natural habitat. Then it takes the first view down into the deep, how it looks when you just put your head into the water where the bottom is so far away that you can only see blue and some fish. A first small view into the other world. We continue to swim through some rocks and a beautiful shipwreck with fish. We are close to shore and look down to the sand and just float in this beautiful liquid world. The rope appears and we notice the shipwreck down in the distance. And just there drops the beautiful monofin down into the deep. We see the beautiful freediver reaching the sand and floating over it in the vastness. Coming up the focus remains on the line just in this one present moment. After this introduction into the ocean the rope appears in the deep ocean where the rays of the sun are the only patterns which put themselves soft over the deep blue. It is this what we practice as freedivers; we look down to the rope concentrate on the path but let go of the future which we anyway still can’t see. Several freedivers appear, all following the rope, but all in their own special way. For sure they play with their mind and use their best practiced focus techniques to head back up safely. Most of them have fins, but not all, some use the line to help them find the way down or up; some just float parallel to it down into the deep. But all of them have something in common, they are all relaxed. The pictures show almost only advanced freedivers, this is the reason for their good performance. But one of them also has his first success just after reaching for the first time fifteen meters (fig.62). I saw him swimming down relaxed, but in a rush, but as soon as he reached the fifteen meters it seemed that something had changed. The image is shot just some seconds after this when he swam back up to the surface in a much more confidence and super relaxed way. The colors of the images are different, this is the combination of waves, wind and currents. The river Sado close to Sesimbra brings the green water, when the current is coming from the river´s direction. Some days its super clear blue and you can see over

15 meters, but sometimes it is green, and you can’t even see the five-meter mark on the line. The images (fig.65, 66) are taken on a different approach. I wanted to take the audience close to the freediver, to visualize it better how it would be down in the deep. Giving a sensation of the distance between the surface and the end of the line and then the possibility to overcome it and reach the mark. The image (fig.67) shows only the end of the line. I wanted to show what one is going to find down there, if you open your eyes and look at the end of the line. There is nothing, just deep blue or green and this small line, which will show you the way back to the surface. When I first reached the fifteen meters I felt like the last image of the book, so light, so free and so transformed when I was heading back to the surface, not even believing in myself that I had made it down into the deep overcoming my fears. So, once you jump in apnea it will be one of the most peaceful moments which you can get: “Nothing penetrates deeper than the breath or is more persuasive. Immediately you will object that the moving breath is like the waves of the sea. But what of retention of the breath? Breathing stops. Is not the cessation of the movement of breath, the life- giving force, the greatest point of stillness imaginable?” (Farrell, 2006, p.33). Once you get there, it seems like an eternity. Everything stands still, no time exists no rush, no thoughts. Just endless freedom. On the last page is the imprint with the logos of the Apnea Diving Center “Spot- Freedive”, who supported me to fulfill this project. “Ocyano” who made the design of the book, and the “ASSW” who helped me to get a professional underwater photographer and to publish the book. On the backside of the cover (fig.70), you can see the domain www.ocean-immersion.com. On the website you can purchase the book, the photographs and see a small film I made about the book.

Fig.38-40, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.41-43, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.44-46, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.47-49, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.50-52, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.53-55, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.56-58, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.59-61, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.62-64, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.65-67, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immersion, 2020.

Fig.68-70, Janna Nadjejda, Ocean Immerion, 2020.

3.2 Analysis of the work

The artistic project Ocean Immersion brings up the old thoughts of the sublime in a real, concrete, and contemporary way. “Instead of making cathedrals out of Christ, man, or ´life`, we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history.” (Newman, 1992, p. 173). In this case it’s a freediver´s feeling. The artistic work is a book, a small square, instead of the size of the artwork itself, it creates a sensation through the human in comparison to the vastness to the ocean. It wants to stimulate us and transfer us from one mental state to another: “Immersion can be an intellectually stimulating, process however, in the present as in the past, in most cases immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another. It is characterized by diminishing critical distance to what is shown and increasing emotional involvement what is happening.” (Grau, 2003, p.13). It wants to drag us away from the stressful contemporary life, calm us down and open up a different point of view. It brings up the practice of apnea in realistic way as possible but as well it plays with the creation of illusions from the spectators to give a subjective point of view. The written words let us calm down right away, they let our imagination and feelings float into the deep and back up. With a new breath and a different mental state, we continue. The images start with the search of the freediver´s still point; the less we think, the less oxygen we waste. The freediver is lying in the water and using her own technique to calm herself down; it´s the precondition to enter the marginal zone. Gary Hill found this zone in a crushing wave, but you also can find it in the depths of the ocean: “special knowledge of a non-ordinary state attracts one back-you might say it calls one home-to an apparently marginal zone. We speak of the one who intentionally returns as an initiate, one who hears and responds: the beginner of the work.” (Gary Hill apud Quasha, Stein, 2000, p. 215). As soon as we pass the first pages, we leave the horizon behind and immerse under the surface. The artist wants to translate the viewer into the ocean, to give him the feeling of loss of gravity, she underlines this through the change of perspective, every point of view is represented, so that one can truly immerse into the sensation of diving.

We discover the underwater world, see shipwrecks and fishes. We take some shallow dives at first and head up to the surface again. Our eyes are getting used to the underwater environment in a slow way, step-by-step. It takes one deeper and opens a glance into the eternal deepness where some fish fly by. It wants to adapt the spectator, and keep the pleasure rising. The poor visibility from the underwater images plays with the characteristics of the human eye, if we can’t see until the end our mind reacts as it would be endless and so one can create his own illusions. The photographs are inspired from Caspar David Friedrichs paintings where you can’t see through the fog and you get a sensation of the endless, and the human stands in comparison to nature. A rope appears and it disappears in the unsharp infinite, inspired by the painting Neptune´s Horses, where the god rides over the waves with his own created horses, which disappear in the infinite with immense power and joy; and so we can head down into the unknown. Sometimes some rays of the sun appear, a reconnection to the divine, whatever this is for each of us. Freedivers appear next to the rope they choose to follow into the deep, surrounded from the endless ocean. They let themselves fall into the abyss, into the unknown, our biggest threat. Some pictures bring up some degree of fear because they are dark and mysterious in some edges. Edmund Burke wrote down so long ago, that this gives an impressive sensation onto our imagination:

The human as a lonely figure in the deep ocean demonstrates the human in confrontation with himself. The only barrier we are going to find in the deep is our own mind, our own tumults, and one must handle what he is confronted with, to continue a

25 Original: “Und doch trägt in der Malerei eine ahnungsvolle Dunkelheit in manchen Fällen zur Wirkung eines Gemäldes bei: weil nämlich die gemalten Bilder denen in der Natur dunkle, verworrene, ungewisse Bilder eine größere Gewalt auf die Phantasie und damit auf die Erregung heftiger Leidenschaften ausüben, als dies die klareren und bestimmteren tun.” (Burke, 1989, p.97) 69 safe way into the deep. Freediving is a constant challenge with our mind, a mind game, a battle to overcome barriers but also to respect our own limits. Overcoming a threat, a challenge can create immense power and joy, like Burke wrote down a long time ago: “Accordingly, when I speak of cause or effective cause, I mean only certain changes in the body, or certain powers and properties of the body that cause some change in the mind (Burke, 1989, p.169). But as we look closer, we see that there is no fear, the divers completely let loose, already they overcame it, they are totally calm and relaxed, and we might feel their silence and stillness. Almost all of them have their eyes closed, they are down in the dark just by themselves. Our sympathy makes it possible that we can get affected like the divers on the photographs. We might feel the sensation of timelessness, and experience transtemporal awareness which might mean: “To be conscious is not to be in time” (T.S.Eliot apud. Quasha, Stein, 2000). Sometimes the figures blend with its surrounding and get one with the ocean. Maybe just there the human experiences how it is when periphery and threshold get one in the present moment. It might be a stage where we are able to keep two neural networks on, the extrinsic and the intrinsic, instead of one. Liminal states are described as wholeness, being complete. Turrell says that the sensation of space alone can bring up the sensation of entity: “I’m also interested in the sense of presence of space; that is space where you feel a presence, almost an entity - that physical feeling and power that space can give.” (Turrel, 2020). The humans on the images don’t appear to need to look out for something else, they look complete, just with themselves down in the deep. They are on a personal journey, every one of them to experience what is unique. Some freedivers claim that transformative moments occur down in the deep which are so hard to describe. This reminds us very much on Newman’s now:

This unique moment might be the unity with ourselves, maybe our own light inside, which we should find, that moment where this simple but valid experience happens.

Newman’s painting series Onement just has one line and exactly that is so important. It could be when we manage to focus on our relaxation inside and our challenge outside. It might be the moment where our brain releases a big amount of oxygen and glucose and has time to restructure and reconnect. It is when everything is still and quiet and something rushes in and we get altered: “The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered.” (Morley, 2010, p.12). On the last pictures the perspective changes and we get totally immersed into the depths of the ocean and see from the depth up to the surface. We see how the diver focuses on his way his way down in the deep. It makes us rethink about the use of a small amount of stress which the diver might add to his total calmness, to get his brain to focus better until he reaches the end of the line right in front of us. And there the page with the intended mark appears, the weight floats alone in the deep. Freedivers claim a transformation point can happen on every part of the dive and it is very subjective. Some experience it when they return to the surface without fear and can see with pleasure the vastness of the ocean and the light witch illuminates the deep. Kant said that if we want to achieve a `higher level´ it is necessary to get to a point where one is aware that he never will be able to measure objectively the object, but in his subjective view knows that he recognized a superior totality; this makes him achieve a higher level of himself, but only if one achieves to look at it without fear (Kant, p.279). Because we recognize this limitation, we gain in the end a positive effect. The book opens an immersive introspection into the ocean, sometimes the diver looks in the depths of the ocean, like our planet in the universe. We are closer, or more connected with the ocean and our planet than we thought. We have a mammalian dive response, which helps us to use oxygen more effective and protects our lungs from collapsing. We get to life in amniotic fluid and can hold our breath like dolphins when we are born. Scientific research found out that, just by seeing water and the color blue helps to provoke positive emotional effects which calm, relax and energize us. Our body consists to seventy percent out of water and a embryo to ninety-nine. For sure we have taken a part of the ocean with us to the firm land. But we still can’t encompass the vastness; nor of the ocean, from which we still have just discovered around ten percent and less of the universe. But this recognition of our limitation, can make us rethink our own existence and how to deal with it.

Conclusion

This dissertation is an immersion into a different world. The question was: how can we get a benefit or positive effect through the ocean? The old thoughts from philosophers, artists and poets like Kant, Burke, Edgar Allan Poe, Walter Crane, Katsushika Hokusai bring up a scary way to gain strength from the ocean. They described and painted the ocean mostly in dark colors, focused on the endless figure of the vortex, and on the unknown. Fear and the unknown were the tool they used to create sublime sensations; Burke describes it like this:

Overpassing this fear was the way to gain strength, for instance the painting Neptune’s Horses showed clearly the god floating powerful over the crushing waves which disappear in the endless. Or it can bring us on a higher level, just because we recognize that we will never be able to measure objectively the object, but in our subjective view we recognized a superior totality; this makes us achieve a higher level of ourselves. It makes it possible to look at the sublime and open a question about whatever we call divine. Another sublime sensation is something very simple but very powerful: liminality. Barnett Newman might be the one who described in the best way it´s sensation. The zip from the Onement VI (fig.10), has just one line that is exactly what liminality is about. Where everything fuses, the sense of timelessness, an entity where you experience something that is so hard to describe. Apnea can give you a possibility to make a liminal experience. This can be a real transition point where a big gap opens and something new arises and changes some mind patterns. The ocean is a perfect playground to create a sublime sensation. But there can be made different steps which create a positive gain.

An immersive environment can change a mental state: “Immersion can be an intellectually stimulating, a process however, in the present as in the past, in most cases immersion is mentally absorbing and a process, a change, a passage from one mental state to another.”(Grau, 2003, p.13). It is possible to immerse into a different world and get a mental shift, sometimes a book transfers you to a different place another time it’s a big panorama. One can have many stimuli for instance a loss of weight like the paintings of Monet or as well on a negative way, like the battle panoramas, where they wanted to bring up patriotic feelings. Turrell´s immersive artworks create an introspection, where we search for our own light and our own place in the universe. The immersive concepts about Apnea are also an introspection and they are a guideline how we can learn to control our mind and body when we truly immerse into us. Before we dive into the ocean, we must find our still point which can change our mental state. It can be used in so many parts of life. It can help in stressful moments to calm down, relax and refocus on our daily duties. We must rediscover our own breathing rhythm. A correct breath is between five to twelve breaths a minute, brings our heart rate down and calms us. The belly breathing helps to release tension, it’s the way relaxed people breath. Belly breathing expels toxins, massages our inner organs and regulates much more. We learn to pay attention to it if we get in a rush, we learn to control ourselves us and get back to a normal breathing rhythm and so back to a healthy rhythm for ourselves. We can notice that our digestion and inner blood circulation is getting better, and we feel healthier and stronger in a physiological and psychological context. The concept mind game brings the possibility to gain control over our minds. Freediving helps us to eliminate obstacles we have created and helps us to achieve goals we never would have thought as possible. We learn to push our limits, take small steps forward and if we are ok, overpass them every time a little bit more. But it also can show us our limits like maybe only a few things on this planet can. It shows us how insignificant small we are in comparation to the immense ocean. On sixty meters in the deep the mind control is the only thing which will keep you alive. “First we have to control ourselves and then we are free” (Albuquerque, 2019). We learn to focus. There are many possibilities like autosuggestion or the perfect combination of a total relaxation and a little bit of stress, witch we can use in a positive

74 way. There exist many technics for pnea to get to the still point, for the mind game and to stay focused, but everyone must discover his own way for each one of them. If we manage to control ourselves, we might experience a liminal sensation which combines the old and contemporary foundation of the sublime: “The sublime experience is fundamentally transformative, about the relationship between disorder and order, and the disruption of the stable coordinates of time and space. Something rushes in and we are profoundly altered.” (Morley, 2010, p.12). The third chapter Apnea brings up the similarity of the human and the ocean and the history of diving. It is impressive how much memory from the ocean remains in our body memory and that it still has value today, like the mammalian dive response, our blood composition or just like a baby is born and naturally would swim and hold his breath like a marine mammal. The book from the artistic project Ocean Immersion is an immersion into the underwater world, it plays with our sensations and illusions. It takes one out of daily stress and presents the sublime in a real and concrete way. It takes us into another world, confronts the human with darkness and fear. It shows how we can be in control of our own body and mind in the middle of the unknown, how one can look at it without fear. And we can notice the new point of view on the sublime as a liminal experience under the surface of the ocean, where everything goes quiet, and time and space become one. Kant brought up the thought about the vastness, the unpresentable. Sometimes the diver looks like planet earth in the universe which brigs up the question about our existence and how to deal with it. Newman’s now is the way to experience the sublime in a subjective new point of view, in this case from a freediver. The weak part of the work, that it is just one book, it was a long journey to make it, not even thinking that a year ago I wouldn’t dive even five meters down, less I would have taken a camera with me. But I will make a film and huge prints which are illuminated with natural lights and use more immersive techniques. To bring people to step inside in a room of ocean, like Turrell makes with light. I want to continue my research and bring more valid information for the human from the ocean. The strong part of the work is that I really found the sublime in a concrete and real way that can be understood by anyone: “Instead of making cathedrals out Christ, man, or ´life`, we are making them out of ourselves, out of our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident one of revelation, real and concrete, that can be understood by anyone who will look at it without the nostalgic glasses of history.” (Newman, 1992,

75 p.173). It answered questions and opened others. Marina Abramovic says that artists are helping people to find their inner self and something new what we can believe in, Turrell wants us to find our own light and own point of view of the divine. Freediving is an introspective search, how one can control our mind and body and at the same time it’s a research on the outside. How to adapt as good as possible to the ocean and make use of all of our body memory. But this knowledge can also be transferred to firm land, it can help us to be more efficient, to control ourselves better and so be completely free by choosing what we really want to do. And there is the open question. Down there when I once overpassed the twenty-five meters, I really felt the turn of buoyancy. It was a strong force which pulled me down, it´s also called the freefall when our lungs get squeezed and we get lighter than the water. I didn´t enjoy it but also didn´t panic. Some people say it feels like home when you overcome this fear. For me it was like entering a different space, another world. I´ll get there again, safe and focused with a different point of view and find out how our nature adapts down there: “By changing space, by leaving the space of one´s usual sensibilities the space of one´s usual sensibilities one enters into communication with a space that is physically innovating…For we do not change place we change our Nature.” (Bachelard, 1964). Now I´m making the next level of freediving, the Aida 4 to control myself so well that I can freefall into the next space.

REFERENCES:

Abramovic, Marina. Statements from conversation with the author, 1992. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 212. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Bachelard, Gastón. Ensayo sobre la imaginación de la materia: El agua y los sueños. Paris: Librairie José Corti, 1942.

Boetticher, Anna. In die Tiefe: Wie ich meine Grenzen suchte und Chancen fand. Berlin: Ullstein extra, 2019.

Burke, Edmund. Vom Erhabenen und Schönen. Hamburg: Meiner, 1989.

Burke, Edmund. A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1757. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 12- 21. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Melo, Gabriela. Alex Botelho: O homen que enfrenta as ondas grandes. A Bola ao Centro, (27.05.2019).

Christian, Oli. Paper: Aida 2 Freediver Course, 2018. AIDA International Association for the Development of Apnea.

Christian, Oli. Paper: Aida 3 Advanced Freediver Course, 2018. AIDA International Association for the Development of Apnea.

Chyong, Yi Yu M.A. The motiv water in arts, taking into account the works of Bill Viola and Fabrizio Plessis. Dissertation on the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Department III, Art History, University of Trier, 2008. (Consulted: 21.10.19; https://katalog.ub.uni- leipzig.de/Record/0014955299).

Dancini, Jose Luiz. Mergulho em Apneia: fundamentos para a prática desportiva. Sao Paulo: Ed. do Autor, 2005.

Davies, Chare. Video: Osmose, 1995. (Consulted: 07.09.19; https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=464&v=54O4VP3tCoY).

De Jong, Koen. Hof, Wim. Nie wieder krank: Gesund, stark und leistungsfähig durch die Kraft der Kälte. München: Riva, 2019.

Dorner, Manfred und Ochsenbauer, Leo. Redl, Christian. Freitauchen: Meine Welt in Bildern. Ljubljana: Nullzeit, 2006.

Farell, Emma. One Breath: A reflection on freediving. Hatherleigh: Pynto, 2006.

Finnegan, William. Barbarentage. Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2018.

Garner, Rob. Nasa Satellite Reveals How Much Saharan Dust Feeds Amazon´s Plants. Nasa Official Website, 2017. (Consulted: 28.10.19; https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa- satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants/).

Grau, Oliver. From Immersion to Illusion. Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 2003.

Homer. The Odyssey and Adventure from Odysseus. Audiobook Read by speaker. Degen, Michael. DAV play, SWR, September 2007.

Hossenfelder, M. Antike Glückslehren: Kynismus und Kyrenaismus, Stoa, Epikureismus und Skepsis. Stuttgart: Kröner, 1996.

Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Judgment, 1790. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 12-21. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Kant, Immanuel. Die drei Kritiken in ihrem Zusammenhang mit dem Gesamtwert. Mit verbindendem Text zusammengefasst von Raymund Schmidt. Alfred Kröner Verlag: Leipzig, ohne Jahr.

Kiki Bosch. Official Website: Disturb the comfort. (Consulted: 16.09.19; https://www.kikibosch.com/).

Kleiner, Diana. Yale Courses: Exploring Special Subjects on Pompeian Walls, 2009. (Consulted: 11.03.21; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lEPUrBdxx8)

Knapton, Sarah. Nomadic divers evolve larger spleens to stay underwater for 13 minutes: scientists find. Telegraph ( Consulted: 01.16.20; https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2018/04/19/nomadic-divers-evolve-larger-spleens-stay- underwater-13-minutes/)

Lourenço, Susana. The psychology of freediving: psychological strategies used by elite freedivers. Tese de mestrado, Psicologia, Faculdade de Psicologia, Universidade de Lisboa, 2018. ( Consulted: 15.01.20; https://repositorio.ul.pt/handle/10451/38422)

Luther, Martin. The New Testament: of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. International Gideonbund: Wetzlar, 1966.

Lyotard, Jean-Francois, extract form L’Inhuman: Causeries sur le temps, 1988. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 27-41. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Melville, Herman. Moby Dick. Aufbau Verlag: Leck, 1956.

Morley, Simon. Documents of Contemporary Art: The Sublime. Cambridge: The MITT Press, 2010.

Nery, Guillaume. Profundezas: Mergulhando em busca de si. Arthaud: Paris, 2014.

Nery, Guillaume. The exhilarating peace of freediving. (Consulted: 16.09.19; https://www.ted.com/talks/guillaume_nery_the_exhilarating_peace_of_freediving#t-348508)

Newman, Barnett. The Sublime is Now, 1948. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 12-21. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Nichols, Wallace J. The Surprising Science That Shows How Being Near, In, Out, or Under Water Can Make You Happier, Healthier, More Connected, and Better at What You Do: Blue Mind. Back Bay Books: New York, 2015.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Also sprach Zarathustra. Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag: München, 2010.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Über Wahrheit und Lüge im außermoralischen Sinne. Audiobook. Read by Bruder Egregantius, 2014.

Poe, Edgar Allan. Descent into the Maelstrom, 1841. (Consulted: 15.04.19; http://www.pinkmonkey.com/dl/library1/desce_.pdf).

Pelizzari, Umberto y Tovaglieri Stefano. Curso de Apnea. Paidotribo: Badalona, 2005.

Perry, John L. Leave Your Ego at the Door: A Narrative Investigation into Effective Wingsuit Flying, 2017. (Consulted: 21.10.19; www.frontiersin.org).

Schielke, Thomas. Light Matters: Seeing the Light with James Turrell. Arch Daily. (Consulted: 15.01.20; https://www.archdaily.com/380911/light-matters-seeing-the-light-with-james-turrell) Schiller, Friedrich. Der Taucher, 1797. (Consulted: 21.10.19; https://www.friedrich-schiller- archiv.de/inhaltsangaben/schiller-der-taucher-inhaltsangabe-interpretation-und-quelle/).

Stafford, Barbara Maria and Frances Terpark. “Panoramas” in Devices of Wonder: from the world in a box to images on a screen. Los Angeles: Getty, 2001.

Turrell, James. Official Website: About. (Consulted: 14.01.2020; http://jamesturrell.com/about/introduction/)

Turrell, James. Interview, 1990. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 12-21. London: The MIT Press, 2010. Quasha, George and Charles Stein, HanD HearD/ Liminal Objects, 2000. In The Sublime: Documents of Contemporary Art, edited by Simon Morley, 12-21. London: The MIT Press, 2010.

Verne, Jules. 20.000 Leagues Under the Sea, 1871. (Consulted: 28.10.19; https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1cVAwcCiqjAVYSgLi5UfE2-WyCpeesGih).

Wollff, Markus. Caspar David Friedrich: Die Landschaft der Seele. GEO ( Consulted: 08.01.20; https://www.geo.de/magazine/geo-epoche-edition/20083-rtkl-deutsche-romantik- caspar-david-friedrich-die-landschaft-der )