Terrestrische Universität: Oceans in Transformation - a podcast by ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien Karlsruhe

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.

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