Micronesian Studies Commons^™

Coast To Coast, Zeyuan Ren

Masters Theses

This essay contains four bodies of work created during my graduate studies, all of which take place on either the West or East coasts, incorporating performance, photography, and video. In the first half of the paper, I examine how the theme of “displacement” is established in my initial works, and highlight the significance of the state of “being displaced” in my process of imaging and (re)understanding the ocean.

At the core of the thesis, I investigate the wave-piloting of Marshall Islanders and a particular cartographic model, the “stick chart,” which is a mnemonic device embedded with the voyager's somatic memories, …