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Atlantic Midjourney - Film with/for Jeannette Ehlers |
Atlantic Midjourney is a collaborative art film project by Jeannette Ehlers and Delmar Mavignier, created during a ten-day Atlantic crossing from Dakar to Fort-de-France aboard Le Lapérouse luxury cruise ship. The journey from the African to the Caribbean continent is not simply the geographical setting of the film, but its conceptual and historical space.
At the centre of the project is the Atlantic as a repository of history, violence, memory and movement. The contemporary passage across the ocean overlaps with the historical routes of the transatlantic slave trade and with the relationships between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean that continue into the present. The sea becomes both a physical landscape and an archive — a place where history may no longer be directly visible, yet remains profoundly present.
During the journey, Jeannette Ehlers develops performances, physical interventions and situations addressing memory, Black presence, colonial history, resistance, absence and transformation. Her body becomes a medium placed in relation to the immense scale of the ocean, the architecture of the ship and the historical dimensions of the route.
The film, however, is not conceived simply as documentation of these actions. Performance, observation, spoken reflections and interviews, everyday situations aboard the ship, the ocean, the horizon, the vessel itself, sound, and the locations of Dakar and Fort-de-France become material for an autonomous essayistic art film. Camera, editing and sound create another layer through which past and present can enter into resonance.
An important tension emerges between the comfort and technological sophistication of a contemporary Atlantic crossing and the historical significance of travelling along this geographical axis. The ship itself can therefore become an ambivalent image: a protected and privileged space moving across an ocean profoundly marked by forced migration, colonial violence and loss. Rather than explaining this contradiction didactically, the film seeks to make it perceptible through images, bodies, duration, sound, repetition and absence.
The Atlantic is not approached merely as spectacular maritime scenery. **Horizon, water, sky, darkness, wind and the continuous movement of the ship become recurring visual and sonic structures. The apparent emptiness and uneventfulness of the days at sea offer a way of making time, distance and displacement physically perceptible.
Atlantic Midjourney is neither a travel documentary nor record of performances. It is a filmic dialogue between Ehlers’ artistic practice and Mavignier’s work with camera, editing and sound. Ehlers’ performances and reflections provide points of departure from which the film develops its own visual language, exploring the Atlantic as a historical, political, bodily and imaginary space.
Production Start: 27/11/2026
At the centre of the project is the Atlantic as a repository of history, violence, memory and movement. The contemporary passage across the ocean overlaps with the historical routes of the transatlantic slave trade and with the relationships between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean that continue into the present. The sea becomes both a physical landscape and an archive — a place where history may no longer be directly visible, yet remains profoundly present.
During the journey, Jeannette Ehlers develops performances, physical interventions and situations addressing memory, Black presence, colonial history, resistance, absence and transformation. Her body becomes a medium placed in relation to the immense scale of the ocean, the architecture of the ship and the historical dimensions of the route.
The film, however, is not conceived simply as documentation of these actions. Performance, observation, spoken reflections and interviews, everyday situations aboard the ship, the ocean, the horizon, the vessel itself, sound, and the locations of Dakar and Fort-de-France become material for an autonomous essayistic art film. Camera, editing and sound create another layer through which past and present can enter into resonance.
An important tension emerges between the comfort and technological sophistication of a contemporary Atlantic crossing and the historical significance of travelling along this geographical axis. The ship itself can therefore become an ambivalent image: a protected and privileged space moving across an ocean profoundly marked by forced migration, colonial violence and loss. Rather than explaining this contradiction didactically, the film seeks to make it perceptible through images, bodies, duration, sound, repetition and absence.
The Atlantic is not approached merely as spectacular maritime scenery. **Horizon, water, sky, darkness, wind and the continuous movement of the ship become recurring visual and sonic structures. The apparent emptiness and uneventfulness of the days at sea offer a way of making time, distance and displacement physically perceptible.
Atlantic Midjourney is neither a travel documentary nor record of performances. It is a filmic dialogue between Ehlers’ artistic practice and Mavignier’s work with camera, editing and sound. Ehlers’ performances and reflections provide points of departure from which the film develops its own visual language, exploring the Atlantic as a historical, political, bodily and imaginary space.
Production Start: 27/11/2026