36.5 | A Durational Performance with the Sea

In 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (2013 -2022), New York-based artist Sarah Cameron Sunde stands in a tidal bay for a full tidal cycle (12-13 hours) as water engulfs her body and then reveals it again. The public participates. What began in 2013 with an impulsive poetic gesture has grown into a complex evolving series of nine artworks, involving thousands of people in communities around the world: Maine, Mexico, California, The Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Kenya, Aotearoa-New Zealand, and New York.

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36.5 / New York Estuary, the 9th and final performance in the 36.5 series took place in NYC on September 14, 2022 (7:27am – 8:06pm) with participation from around the world: livestreaming with simultaneous performances in previous international locations layered in, and filming in real time to create the 12 hour, 39 minute durational video work.

“Prompted by Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New York City in 2012, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea is an investigation of individual and collective vulnerability and resilience.”

— Nicole Miller for Hyperallergic

“The surface simplicity of the work belies the complexity of its theoretical, aesthetic, and political potential. 36.5 offers an opportunity to approach questions of art, performance, and of the human place in nature from a variety of discursive and disciplinary perspectives: feminism, eco-theory, theories of space, embodiment, and affect, questions of resilience, histories of performance, art history, as well as questions of transnational art activism and modes of fostering eco-spheric consciousness.”

– Una Chaudhuri, Eco-critic, Professor, Dean for the Humanities at NYU

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