Terrestrische Universität: Oceans in Transformation

Critical Zones | Terrestrische Universität


[16.07.2020]


The ocean is a sensorium. It records in its complex dynamics the
transformations of the Earth, and it inscribes its cycles back
into the activities of life-forms. The global ocean is changing
its circulations, energies, interactions, and ecologies. It is
the most dynamic and sensitive component of our living planet.
How can we think from and with the ocean?


The ocean is in a new phase of its dynamic history, shaped by
intensifications of the impact of human activities on planetary
systems. The transformations are plural: they traverse a
multiplicity of elements, circulations, life forms, environments,
and operate across a gradient of dimensions, energies and
rhythms.


How are we to understand the current sets of transformations
changing the ocean without reverting to an all-sweeping new
horizon, one single line of sight? How to become sensible to the
multiple refractions and circulations that are coupled in the
making of the Anthropocene ocean?


TBA21–Academy and Territorial Agency are collaborating to connect
new forms of visibility and understanding of the ocean brought by
science, culture, and art. Linking scientists, artists, policy
makers, and conservationists by way of shared images, data sets,
and narratives, the project is structured as an instigation for
new cognitive modes of encountering the ocean and a line towards
attainable solutions to safe-guard the oceans.


»Oceans in Transformation« is a multi-year research project by
Territorial Agency, commissioned by TBA21-Academy.


The project is highlighted in the exhibition »Critical Zones«
with a multimedia installation investigating the architecture of
the continental shelf, and how they are being transformed into a
complex architecture of extraction. Fossil resources are being
extracted at larger and larger risk, excessive fishing is
depleting the livelihood of marine life, the ploughing of the
seabed through trawling is rearranging the sedimentary strata and
eradicating life.


About the participants


John Palmesino is an architect and urbanist, born in Switzerland.
He has established, together with Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, Territorial
Agency, which has designed the integrated vision for the future
of the Markermeer, in the Netherlands. In his scientific as well
as artistic work, he focuses on the territorial transformations.


Ann-Sofi Rönnskog is an architect and urbanist from Finland.
Together with John Palmesino, she has established Territorial
Agency . Her work focuses on the architectural and spatial
analysis of contemporary city transformation processes.


Markus Reymann is the director of TBA21-Academy. Between July,
2011 and today, Reymann initiated and conducted numerous
expeditions. Each trip is designed as a collaboration with
invited artists, scientists and thinker's eager to embark on
oceanic explorations. Inspired by this unusual encounter with
both human and natural elements, the Academy commissions
ambitious projects informed by the itinerary of the research
vessel Dardanella.


Francesca Thyssen-Bornemisza is the Founder and Chair of
Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21). Driven by a belief
in the power of art to serve as an agent of change, she has
supported artists throughout her career in the production and
creation of new work that fuels engagement with the most pressing
issues of our times.


Bruno Latour is a philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist. He
curated the exhibition »Critical Zones«, which puts the focus on
the thin surface of the earth, in which all transactions of life
are mutually dependent. In his latest publication »Down to Earth:
Politics in the New Climatic Regime« he demands to define
politics as what leads toward the Earth and not toward the global
or the national.


Peter Weibel is the chairman of the ZKM | Center for Art and
Media Karlsruhe. He studied literature, medicine, logic,
philosophy, and film. On account of his various activities as
artist, media theorist, curator, and as a nomad between art and
science, he became a central figure in European media art. He
also curated the exhibition »Critical Zones«


Bettina Korintenberg is a cultural studies scholar whose work
focuses on the areas where art, architecture, and literature
intersect. Her curatorial and academic practice centers on
critically questioning and reflecting on paradigms of modernity
against the backdrop of contemporary social and ecological
transformations. She also curated the exhibition »Critical
Zones«.