Tidal Pulse
by Enrique Ramírez

AMIFF – Arctic Moving Image and Film Festival
19 October, 2018
Harstad, Norway
video documentation

Tidal Pulse is a site-responsive sound piece by Enrique Ramírez, performed live and experienced with wireless headphones. It takes place on a local speedboat during public travel schedule, and it lasts approximately three hours – inviting to embrace a slower pace and take the time to sense the surroundings.

In Tidal Pulse, Ramírez records the underwater noise of oil pumps and the sounds of the boat – the vibrations created by the engine inside and outside the moving vehicle and in the operations room. These sounds are composed in real time along the journey; they become the pulse of the boat, seen here as a fuel-powered organ that drifts along our polluted waters and threatened ecosystems. The boat’s pulse intertwines with the voices of interviewed local activists, politicians, scientists and workers in the Norwegian oil industry. They reflect on the present logic of extraction, on post fossil-fuel societies, on the future of Norway and that of the Earth.

Sound: Enrique Ramírez
Voices: Silje Ask Lundberg (environmental activist, Naturvernforbundet / Friends of the Earth Norway), Barbro Hætta (Sami local politician, practicing as a doctor), Kjell Giaever (director of Petro Arctic), Dr. Jack Kohler (glaciologist, Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø), Anne Henriette Reinås Nilut (member of the Sami parliament and cultural producer).