© 2025/05
Supervising lecturer:
Conceptional support:
Realization support:
* Anja Banholzer
* Ralf Banholzer
* Hannes Soballa
When I was a child, I saw a cartoon where a polar bear was climbing a buoy. The buoy was like any other tethered underwater with a chain. Just thinking about this fact drove me crazy. Why would the polar bear climb it? Is he not afraid? I could not imagine getting close to that buoy myself.
Only a year ago, I learned why. The fear of human-made objects submerged in water is called submechanophobia. I learned about it on Reddit. The subreddit r/submechanophobia is a collection of images that trigger something in me—a feeling somewhere between trepidation, anxiety and fascination. These images show a variety of different submerged human-made objects: Wrecks, infrastructure like the legs of oil rigs, ship propellers, submarines as well as chains. Chains underwater freak me out. Chains of anchors, chains of machines, or chains of buoys. The images of these chains are the most intense ones, they have the strongest effect on me.
”Chains underwater freak me out“ is an exhibition consisting of an essay and several artworks. Through the essay and corresponding artworks, I explore the thresholds of my fear of chains underwater.