Sarah Cameron Sunde is an interdisciplinary artist and director working at the intersection of performance, video and public art. Her work investigates scale and duration in relationship to the human body, our environment, and deep time. She is creator of 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea (nine works spanning six continents, 2013 - present) which is scheduled to take place in September 2022 at the Cove at Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens. Sarah is also the instigator/co-founder of Works on Water (artist-driven triennial/experimental organization), she has had solo shows at Gallatin Galleries, Georgia Museum of Art, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Te Uru Waitākere Contemporary Gallery; Productions and other work presented at 3LD Art & Technology Center, Knockdown Center, EFA Project Space, Kennedy Center, Guthrie Theater and internationally in Norway, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, Mexico, China, Uganda, Kenya, UAE, Aotearoa-New Zealand, and Iraqi Kurdistan. Residencies include: Baryshnikov Art Center, LMCC Workspace, Watermill Center, Hermitage Foundation. Honors/Funding include: MAP Fund, Princess Grace Award, Creative Climate Award, Invoking the Pause, LMCC Creative Engagement & UMEZ.

36.5 / New York Estuary is a site-specific participatory performance and video artwork that invites New Yorkers into conversations around deep time, embodiment, and sea-level rise. In September 2022, Sarah Cameron Sunde will walk into the Cove at Socrates Sculpture Park, and stand in one spot for a full tidal cycle (12+ hours) as Water slowly engulfs her body up to her chin and then recedes back down to her feet. The tide functions as a metaphor for sea-level rise. The public is invited to join Sunde standing in the water for however long they like. Collaborating artists and community members mark the passing of each hour from the shore.

36.5 / New York Estuary will be the ninth and final culminating work in the series, 36.5 / A Durational Performance with the Sea, (2013 – present). The project began as a poetic gesture in response to Hurricane Sandy’s impact on New York City and has grown into a complex large-scale series of productions made in collaboration with communities around the world.  Since 2013, Sunde has stood in seven bodies of water off the coasts of Maine, Mexico, San Francisco, the Netherlands, Bangladesh, Brazil, and Kenya. The cycle will be complete in 2022 with this final large-scale production in NYC.

The entire performance will be filmed in real-time from multiple perspectives, live-streamed around NYC and the world, and then edited into a durational video work, the same length as the performance. This durational video work will premiere on location within 10 days of the performance, and ultimately be shown in museums and galleries as an immersive 12 channel video installation with audio. 36.5 makes the abstract concrete by transforming intellectual comprehension into embodied understanding.  The project is a radical call to reconsider our contemporary relationship with Water— as individuals, as communities, as a civilization, and as a species.

Sarah Cameron Sunde has also served as Deputy Artistic Director of New Georges for 16 years (2001-2017), instigated/co-founded Lydian Junction (live art collective: 2011-2014) and Oslo Elsewhere (theater company: 2004-2012). B.A. UCLA (Theater); M.F.A. City College NYC (Digital & Interdisciplinary Art Practice).

Please visit the Instagram and website of 36.5 A Durational Performance with the Sea for more information, along with Sarah’s Instagram and her website.