Director of Photography
Ding Ling is a research scientist who fled Indonesia in the wake of rising sea levels, and at the start of the episode disembarks from the cargo ship on which she had been living. She moves onwards to explore new/old territories, revealing something of her past in Indonesia and China via Singapore as the episode progresses. During her journey she meets the resourceful Senait, an Eritrean refugee who subsists by evaporating water from the Dead Sea to make it potable. In her ongoing effort to compile an archive of those who remain, Ding Ling records an interview with Senait, where Senait recounts her own peripatetic past and perilous journey through Sudan.
Director of Photography
Our protagonists are taken captive aboard a gigantic cargo ship, whose megalomaniacal captain Ismael entertains biblical pretensions. Ben is made to ‘pay his passage’, while a ghostly Yasmine stalks the empty corridors of the ship. Whales and whaling become a key subject – interrogating colonial and indigenous politics in the process.
Director of Photography
Ben and Yasmine arrive at a strange and enigmatic community based on an island in the lagoon of Venice. They engage in scavenging raids to the mainland and partake in the group’s Bacchanalian orgies. Their gluttonous sexual vagrancy is paralleled with images of overfishing and unnecessary cruelty in the fishing industry of the Mediterranean.