Something New
2012 |7-9 pm | More Info

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A Pesca: Commercial Fishing in Northeastern Brazil

In the Gallery: April 7th - May 31st

About this Exhibition:

Photographer Barron Bixler evokes thoughtful reflection on the fishing practices currently forming the livelihood of the Brazilian fishing community in Alagoas, Brazil. Since 2008, California photographer Barron Bixler has been documenting life in a small but important fishing community in Alagoas, Brazil. Faced with declining fish, shrimp and lobster populations, high unemployment and the imminent destruction of its protected mangrove swamps due to the planned development of an oil supertanker shipyard, the men and women of this tight-knit community are caught somewhere between a relatively traditional way of life and Brazil's race to become an economic superpower.


Artist Statement:

Wedged tightly into the bow of the Penedo, legs straddling the anchor housing that was bound tightly with bristling hawsers, I stared 20 feet down into the trough of another giant sea swell. They’d been rolling through without mercy for 8 of the past 12 hours we’d been at sea. The ramshackle trawler nosedived down the backside of the swell—pitching, rolling and yawing like the godforsaken mother of all malfunctioning carnival rides—and landed in the trough, surprisingly gently. There the boat came to rest for a fraction of a second before rocking back again and lurching to the top of the next swell, which appeared as a mountain of dark green water before us.

The nets hung from rusted spars jutting out on either side of the boat. They were slung on great lengths of steel cable and were lost somewhere in the deeps of the sea, gathering their bounty. The boat circled slowly, straining against the drag of the nets in the water and on the ocean floor. The droning “glug-glug-glug” of the boat’s engine sent pulsing, subsonic rhythms in equal measure through wood and steel, flesh and bone.

I extricated myself from the relative safety of my perch and made my way astern, keeping my ass low to the deck and my white-knuckle-death-grip on any superstructure that looked bolted down. Passing the small cabin, I glimpsed through windows grimed with diesel smoke and salt spray one of the two-man crew napping in a coffin-like bunk suspended above a gaping hole in the floorboards that opened directly onto the engine room. The cabin probably held enough carbon monoxide to choke a cockroach, but it didn’t stop him from waking suddenly when my body slammed against the outer cabin wall during a particularly heinous pitch-roll-yaw.

When I arrived (only slightly battered) at the stern, Zito—the boat’s captain—threw me a knowing smile and tossed his chin in greeting. He sat on a wooden bench and steadied the rudder with his bare foot while deftly using his hands to sort the nets’ last haul. Shrimp in one huge pile. Medium-sized fish in another. Smaller fish in yet another. Four anemic spiny lobsters stared stubbornly into a corner of the deck and occasionally snapped at each other or seized a fish and sliced through its soft flesh like a hot knife through butter. The by-catch discards—crabs, rays, eels, octopi, unsellable (if not necessarily inedible) species of fish, coral, seaweed, plastic and other mysterious creatures of the deep—got chucked overboard.

Something about the scene struck me as peculiar: conspicuously missing from the piles was any fish weighing more than 10 pounds. In fact, the nets went in three times that day and each time came back with what amounted to thousands of bait-sized sea-beings. Maybe a few dozen decent-sized southern red snappers. But no swordfish. Not even a tuna. All day long they’d been running lines off the back of the boat using whole eels as bait and not a single taker. When I asked Zito about it, he just gave an amused shrug and said, “Seis semanas.” Six weeks since they’d line-caught a fish of any notable size.

Trolling these waters twenty-five years ago, fishermen rarely had a bad week, let alone a bad month. Then again, twenty-five years ago Brazilian waters were widely believed to be underfished, their bounty nearly inexhaustible. But today, even in the waters around smaller fishing communities, the populations of spiny lobsters and swordfish teeter on the brink of collapse, and the entire ecosystem appears to be going through its own version of an ecological carnival ride.

Meanwhile, six days a week for 15 hours a day, the fishermen of these small communities sail toward the eastern horizon searching not just for fish, or for a modest living, but for a way of life that in many ways has become its own worst enemy. It’s to their plight that I dedicate these pictures.

The Bathroom Residency

The Bathroom Residency is the second piece in a long-term project entitled "The Residencies" launched in 2009 during Julie Kahn's stay at the Headlands Center for the Arts. With "The Residencies," Julie is inverting the traditional concept of the artist residency from a "retreat" to withdraw from society into a "treat" to engage with society by inventing projects with entrepreneurs in order to live out fantasies, learn new processes, and connect more deeply with work, community, and the food chain. The first edition, "The Cici Residency," unfolded at Gelateria Cici in Mill Valley where the intrepid founders generously allowed Julie to be “in residence” to explore her twin fantasies of making gelato and wet plate collodion tintype portraits. With the 18R edition, taking cues from the urban-minimal-natural aesthetic goals of the new 18R space as well as the local-seasonal-organic refrain of Bi-Rite Market, the installation will take place in the bathroom, made from natural materials and change quarterly. The bathroom reminds us that in spite of our lofty urban ambitions, nature is always just on the other side of the wall, waiting to bust on through. The Bathroom Residency an ongoing annual program. After Julie's one-year tenure, she will pass the tp to an artist of her choosing to take up residence in the special room for resting.