NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO • September 9, 2022
Sarah Cameron Sunde, an interdisciplinary artist, was visiting Maine in 2013 when she noticed something in an ocean inlet. The tide was coming in quickly and completely covered a rock, making it disappear within 30-40 minutes. It was her eureka moment. The tides struck her as the perfect metaphor for sea level rise, quickly transforming the shoreline in a matter of hours the way climate change will, to a much greater degree, over decades. Three days later, she returned for a "durational performance." Standing at the edge of the water at low tide, she continued to stand until the water rose up to her neck. She stayed until the next low tide, nearly 13 hours total. She's produced a series of events in coastal locations around the world to demonstrate the threat of climate change.