Water and memory: nonhuman memory-work in Martha Atienza’s “our islands 11°16’58.4"N 123°45’07.0"E” (2017)
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
Abstract
Set in Bantayan Island in southern Philippines, Martha Atienza’s film our islands11°16’58.4”N 123°45’07.0”E features a subaquatic fisher folk procession. This seemingly religious performance doubles as a protest memory-work for overarching advocacies on extra-judicial killings and climate emergency. The breathing tubes, imaginative costumes, and buoyant bodies of diver-performers simultaneously dramatize an ecological crisis which cinema can effectively disseminate. This essay, therefore, engages with the film’s ecocritical potential by situating seawater, not only as a trope, but as an actor whose agency shapes the movement and diegesis of the film. In doing so, this current reading looks into how water, with all its elemental physicality and presence, facilitates a collaborative memory-work between human and nonhuman agencies. At any rate, while this submerged procession summons an apocalyptic future, it alternatively unfolds a co-constituted memory borne out of, rather than besieged by, the tropics.
Recommended Citation
Claros, I. (2025). Water and Memory: Nonhuman Memory-work in Martha Atienza’s “Our Islands 11°16’58.4"N 123°45’07.0"E” (2017). Safundi. DOI: 10.1080/17533171.2025.2538976.
