Oceans of Art I and II
This 2-day workshop will introduce current approaches in humanities and artistic research to what has been called the world's largest object, Ocean. The ocean occupies 72% of the earth's surface and is changing faster than ever before due to human activity.
While the ocean is the subject of ecological concern, research, and climate activism on behalf of the planet, with overfishing, seabed mining and increasing pollution as the main threats, it is also - and always has been - a source of life, imagination and reverie, a medium for human and non-human movement, transportation and exchange, and a political and economic arena. Building on recent decades' focus on the sea as an object of humanities research - sometimes referred to as the "blue humanities" or “blue cultural studies” - and as a trope in art, the workshop will use art historical, artistic and other practice-based studies from recent years as a starting point for discussions on how a rethinking of the wet element can contribute to changing the subject, radius of action and potentially the impact of art studies.
Target group
PhD students at all stages of their research project and other early-stage researchers dealing with interdisciplinary approaches to art studies (max. 20 participants).
Purpose
- To discuss and appraise recent research in art history, visual culture studies and artistic practice concerning the ocean as a poetic and pictorial trope as well as a political topic.
- To introduce new methodologies in art studies drawing upon feminism, ocean studies, social and human geographies of the sea, marine history etc.
Workshops
Workshop I
28 November - 29 November 2023, 9-16 (both days)
The first workshop is on the role ocean research and Ocean as object in art studies. The workshop will center on the legacy of ocean studies and its impact on art studies and new research practices.
Workshop II
28 May - 29 May 2024, 9-16 (both days)
This workshop is the second (but standalone) in PASS' series on Blue Humanities (ocean and water seen from a humanities point of view) as inspiration for new research topics and methods in art studies. Whereas the first workshop dealt with coastlines and seafaring among other questions, this workshop will explore a variety of media and practices of the ocean, particularly the exploration of the deep sea, through discussions with two visual artists, two curators and an oceanographer specialising in oceans and anthropogenic climate change.
With guest presentations, presentations of research-based art projects, curatorial work, film examples, music, participant contributions and a selection of key texts on the topic, the discussions over the two intense days will revolve around oceans and water as a starting point for new ways of thinking about body, history, consciousness, and water related aspects of the relationship between human and non-human factors of planetary ecologies.
Literature
Autumn 2023
“INTRODUCTION Enter, Wet”
Book Title: For All Waters Book Subtitle: Finding Ourselves in Early Modern Wetscapes
Author(s): Lowell Duckert Published by: University of Minnesota Press. (2017)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5749/j.ctt1n2txs0.4
“Oceans as the Paradigm of History”
Author(s): Prasenjit Duara
Theory, Culture & Society 0(0) 1–24 ! The Author(s) 2021 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions
http://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420984538
“Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions”
Author(s): Philip E. Steinberg
To cite this article: Philip E. Steinberg (2013) Of other seas: metaphors and materialities in maritime regions, Atlantic Studies, 10:2, 156-169, To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2013.785192
“Wet ontologies, fluid spaces: giving depth to volume through oceanic thinking”
Author(s): Philip Steinberg and Kimberley Peters
Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 2015, volume 33, pages 247– 264 Received 3 July 2014; in revised form 18 October 2014; published online 9 March 2015
http://doi.org/10.1068/d14148p
“Swim your ground: Towards a black and blue humanities”
Author(s): Jonathan Howard To cite this article: Jonathan Howard (2023) Swim your ground: Towards a black and blue humanities, Atlantic Studies, 20:2, 308-330,
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2021.2015944
“Rhythm”
Chapter 2 in “A Poetic History of the Oceans - Literature and Maritime Modernity” p 172-201
Author(s): Søren Frank
Textxet studies in comparative literature, volume 98
https://sorenfrank.academia.edu/research
‘Production in View: Allan Sekula’s Fish Story and the Thawing of Postmodernism’
Author(s): Bill Roberts, in Tate Papers no.18
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/18/production-in-view-allan-sekulas-fish-story-and-the-thawing-of-postmodernism
“Baltic Art Center - Artists' Role in an Age of Climate Crisis”
Podcast: https://naarca.art/2023/04/28/testing-grounds-episode-4-baltic-art-center-artists-role-in-an-age-of-climate-crisis-now-available/
Spring 2024
“Hydrofeminism on the Coastline: An Interview with Astrida Neimanis”
Author(s): Neimanis, A., & Bezan, S. (2022). Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman, 3(1): 8.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.16997/ahip.1363
“Imagining Water in the Anthropocene”
Author(s): Neimanis, Astrida. Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Environmental Cultures. Environmental Cultures. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 15 Sep. 2023.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474275415
“How to swim without water: swimming as an ecological sensibility”
Chapter Author(s): Rebecca Olive Book Title: Living with water Book Subtitle: Everyday encounters and liquid connections Book Editor(s): Charlotte Bates, Kate Moles Published by: Manchester University Press. (2023) Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv37mk1tw.23
“Production in View: Allan Sekula’s Fish Story and the Thawing of Postmodernism”
Author(s): Bill Roberts
in Tate Papers no.18
https://www.tate.org.uk/research/tate-papers/18/production-in-view-allan-sekulas-fish-story-and-the-thawing-of-postmodernism
“Baltic Art Center - Artists' Role in an Age of Climate Crisis”
Podcast: https://naarca.art/2023/04/28/testing-grounds-episode-4-baltic-art-center-artists-role-in-an-age-of-climate-crisis-now-available/
Additional Literature
Katherine Richardson: The ocean, climate’s regulator, in UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, p.76-79 in https://sdg-action.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/SDGs-in-the-balance-2022.pdf
Czerski, Helen: The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works, chapter 3, part 1 (What Is the Blue Machine): The Anatomy of the Melody Jue: “Introduction” in Wild Blue Media. Thinking Through Seawater (Duke University Press, 2020), pp.1-33 – https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11g97ph
Siri Ranva Hjelm Jacobsen: Havbrevene (Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2018)
Aqqaluk Lynge: “Ode til Danaiderne” in Marie Kølbæk Iversen: Rovhistorier (O – Overgaden, 2022), p. 11 (Danish, 1977), p. 12 (Greenlandic, extended/amended version, 2008) and/or p. 13 (English, translation of extended/amended version, 2008) – https://cms.overgaden.org/media/pages/publication-pages/rovhistorier/fd44c31554-1664964778/overgaden_marie_dk.pdf
Christian Petzold: Undine, feature film, 2021 – https://fjernleje.filmstriben.dk/film/9000005893/undine
Programme
Autumn 2023
28 November 2023
10-16: Presentations by Head of Research and Exhibitions Sarah Giersing and Curator & ph.d.-stud. Morten Tinning. Tour in the collections and exhibitions with time for discussions etc. (Lunch included)
The whole day takes place at M/S Maritime Museum of Denmark, Ny Kronborgvej 1, 3000 Elsinore.
29 November 2023
9-12: Presentations and discussions of texts with Professor Mikkel Bogh
12-13: Lunch (included)
13-16: The Forces of the Ocean and their Catastrophic Effects on Land. Curator and writer Jacob Lillemose will introduce (together with curator Jason Waite) two artistic projects that each in their own way engage with the catastrophic consequences – on land – of a tsunami.
The whole day takes place at KU, Karen Blixens Vej 1 - lokale 24.1.30
Spring 2024
28 May 2024
9-12: Rikke Luther & Katherine Richardson
Katherine Richardson is an Earth System scientist and professor of bio-oceanography at the Globe Institute, Copenhagen University. She is a leader for the Research Institute on Ocean, Climate and Society (ROCS). Richardson is known internationally for work at UN and in EU institutions. Most recently, she was a leading co-author of the groundbreaking paper ‘Planetary Boundaries’, published in an updated version in Science Advances 9, 37.
Rikke Luther has worked as an artist since the mid-1990s. He is currently undertaking a post-doctoral research project, Ocean-Lands, at ROCS, focusing on muds that are developing as a result of alterations within the Earth System. Her work tries to locate pathways along which social, political, and emotional, processes can navigate new research into historic eDNA, the effects of heating oceans, and rapid shifts in the circulations of the Earth System.
This three-hour session will explore what happens when hard science and art meet, with a particular focus on how art is challenged when co-working with the practices and thought processes of other disciplinary traditions.
12-13: Lunch (included)
13-16: Jacob Lillemose with Mark Nelson and Lisa Rave: Oceanic Pasts and Futures
Curator and writer Jacob Lillemose will invite the American eco-engineer Mark Nelson and the Germany artist Lisa Rave to present their practices with an oceanic focus.
Mark Nelson will give a video talk about the construction of the ocean, including a coral reef inside the Biosphere 2 complex – a man-made biosphere under glass in the Arizona desert - where he lived from 1991 to 1993 together with seven other "biospherians." One of the goals of the Biosphere 2 experiment was to explore the possibilities of facilitating nature as a living organism in the context of an accelerating climate crisis. Jacob Lillemose will introduce Biosphere 2.
Lise Rave will be presented by her two video works We Are Ocean (2019) and Europium (2014), which look at future prospects of the ocean from the perspective of teenagers and the history of Papua New Guinea respectively.
29 May 2024
9-12: Marie Kølbæk Iversen & Susanne Østby: Histories of Predation: Imag(in)ing a Biogenic Archive
Visual Artist Marie Kølbæk Iversen begins by introducing to her trans-medial art project Rovhistorier | Histories of Predation; the culmination of her practice-based artistic PhD research 2017-22. In part, a large-scale video installation, Rovhistorier | Histories of Predation is based on microscopic video recordings from within the eye lenses of the gurry shark, also known as grey- or Greenland shark. Through carbon-14 dating of its eye lens nuclei, recent marine biological research has shown that the shark may live to become as old as 272 to 512 years, which opens a perspective of more-than-human ‘eye witnessing’ that far exceeds the human life span.
In the second part of the workshop, Curator at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter Susanne Østby Sæther will present her interdisciplinary work across curatorial practice and academic research, with an emphasis on her recent engagement with the intersection of media aesthetics and blue humanities. Sæther will also present key points from her in-progress chapter on Marie Kølbæk Iversen’s work, “Through the Eyes of the Greenland Shark: Imag(in)ing a Biogenic Archive,” to be published in the edited volume Media Seas of the High North Atlantic (ed. Alnæs, Bull, Hausken, and Sæther, under contract with Routledge’s Environmental Humanities series).
12-13: Lunch (included)
13-16: Presentations, wrap up and discussions of texts with Professor and Head of centre Mikkel Bogh
Both days takes place at KU, Karen Blixens Vej 2 – Building 16, 3. floor, room 09.
ECTS-credits
- 1.5 ECTS (one workshop)
- 3 ECTS (both workshops)
Workload
Presence total 28 (14) hours + preparation total 56 (28) hours.