Diving as Art Historical Praxis: Towards a Blue Spectatorship

Scuba diving presents a critical methodological intervention for art history by fundamentally challenging the terrestrial, object-centered assumptions underpinning formal analysis. Introducing a condition of fluid positionality where orientation, distance, and stability are perpetually in flux, diving unsettles conventional spectatorship and positionality as critical categories of art history. Advancing the oceanic critiques of terrestrial bias by Melody Jue, Stacy Alaimo, and Christina Sharpe, this paper argues that the dive functions as an analytic act. Through case studies of WWII Pacific wrecks—including the USS Emmons in Okinawa and the USAT Liberty in Bali—this paper examines the perceptual encounter as continually reshaped by oceanic conditions: depth, visibility, current, and buoyancy. Framed territorially as wartime remnants, these sites are analyzed as complex, time-based sculptural assemblages; from this submerged perspective, they enable an art history written from the ocean, attuned to more-than-human entanglements and vibrant biodiversity. Furthermore, the methodological strategies developed through diving extend beyond submerged heritage, offering a framework for interpreting contemporary artworks existing within states of flux, be it political, ecological, or discursive. Rather than romanticizing diving as revelatory, this approach revisits the rigor of formal analysis and adapts it to fluid environments. It reframes diving from a mere technical necessity into a critical, embodied praxis—one that simultaneously opens new perceptual regimes and exposes the extractive infrastructures, such as the institutionalized protocols of recreational and professional diving corporations, that govern access to these sites.