Re:clamation is a single-channel projection installation set entirely underwater. The animation imagines the sea as a space where coastlines, communities, and marine bodies continually reshape one another through reclamation, conflict, and survival. The title plays on “reclamation,” referring to the production of land from the sea and the repeated claiming of coastal space, while also invoking “clamation,” an obsolete term associated with crying out, complaint, or outcry.

The work draws from coastal realities in the Philippines and Hong Kong, where reclamation, militarization, territorial conflict, and urban expansion continue to reshape marine environments and displace water-based communities. Referencing the Badjao of Sulu and the Tanka people of Hong Kong, the animation reflects on lives formed between land and sea, and how these identities shift as structures of power extend into marine space.

The narrative unfolds through underwater transformations. A young Badjao boy becomes entangled in a net and begins to lose breath until an oarfish rises from the depths and gives him gills, allowing him to survive underwater. Known in Japan as the “doomsday fish,” the oarfish carries associations with disaster and disturbance; in Hong Kong, one surfaced along Sok Kwu Wan on Lamma Island in 2016 and was later preserved on the island. As stilt houses collapse into the water, a pufferfish expands into Tin Hau, carrying fear, protection, and adaptation within one body. Elsewhere, a shrimp shaken by the vibration of passing vessels sprouts a satellite-like antenna.

Across these scenes, mutation becomes reciprocal. Marine creatures adapt to altered environments, but human bodies are also reshaped by the sea they depend on. Some creatures hybridize through encounter, while others absorb the forms of drones, satellites, vessels, and surface technologies, as if the pressures above the water have entered their bodies.

Rather than presenting the ocean as a passive landscape, Re:clamation imagines it as a reactive space where mythology, ecology, memory, and geopolitical tension circulate together. The work asks what life becomes when humans, marine creatures, and altered waters continually remake one another.

Concept, Direction, and Production: Josephine Turalba
Field Sound Recordings: Josephine Turalba and Arianna Turalba
Animation: Greton Daclan
Animation Support: Sophia Odulio
Script and Storyboard: Arianna Turalba
Production Support: Rose Go
Sound Design and Engineering: Jason Mitchell