Beyond Midnight 

2023
Immersive media installation

By Michel Droge, in collabroation with Carolina Gonzalez Valencia, Tristan Koepke 

Exhibitions:
2023 Bates College, IMStudio 
2024 UCR (Universidad Costa Rica)
2025 Space Gallery, Envision Resilience  

Beyond Midnight is an immersive multimedia installation that envelops visitors in the mysteries and ecologies of the deep sea. The installation is rooted in the experience of visual artist Michel Droge’s participation in Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Artist-At-Sea program to explore the first known octopus nursery located off the Pacific coast of Costa Rica.

Beyond Midnight invites audiences into an otherworldly space of wonder, vulnerability, and ecological urgency. Through lush projections, layered sonic textures, and text, the installation conjures the ocean’s depths—from the Midnight Zone to the Abyssal Plain, nearly 3,000 meters below the surface. The work foregrounds the vibrant life that thrives in these remote and rarely witnessed ecosystems, framing the deep sea as a queer, generative space. As human industry turns its gaze toward deep-sea mining in search of metals and minerals, Beyond Midnight centers the vitality of these fertile underwater landscapes, resisting extraction through awe, care, and speculative embodiment.