The Ocean as Archive considers other ways of reading the water: materially through oceanographic studies of watery depths and strata, and marine life therein; and temporally by considering the ocean as a speculative site, and as a space of residues. This module also explores alternate ways of reading this crisis: through non-western (Pacific Island) maritime epistemologies and myths, through discourses on migration (both contemporary and historical), through the mobilization of the image of water in critical theory, in literature, in music, and in art.
The workshops examine the site of the ocean not with the aim to systematically plumb its depths so to speak, but rather sees the ocean as a laboratory with which to examine multiple and often contradictory approaches when taking to the sea.
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The Ocean As Archive
Mon, Nov 15, 20216:30 pm to 8:30 pm -
Tue, Nov 16, 20216:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Ayesha Hameed explores the heritage of Black diasporas through the figure of the Atlantic Ocean. Her Afrofuturist approach combines performance, sound essays, videos, and lectures. Hameed examines the mnemonic power of these media—their capacity to transform the body into a body that remembers. The motifs of water, borders, and displacement, recurrent in her work, offer a reflection on migration stories and materialities, and, more broadly, on the relations between human beings and what they imagine as nature. Recent exhibitions include Liverpool Biennale (2021), Gothenburg Biennale (2019), Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), and Dakar Biennale (2018). She is co-editor of Futures and Fictions (Repeater 2017) and co-author of Visual Cultures as Time Travel (Sternberg/MIT 2021). She is currently Co-Programme Leader of the Ph.D. in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths University of London.
Session 1: The Ocean as Media
Peters, John Durham. “Chapter 2. Of Cetaceans and Ships; or, The Moorings of Our Being.” The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, 53-114. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Further Reading
Leslie, Esther. “Chapter 1: Flowing Crystals.” Liquid Crystals. London: Reaktion Books, 2016.Easterling, Keller. “The Year in Weather” (website)
Peters, John Durham. “Chapter 4. Lights in the Firmament: Sky Media I (Chronos).” In The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media, 165-212. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.
ibid. “Chapter 5. The Times and the Seasons: Sky Media II (Kairos).”
Session 2: Pacific Island Migration
Further Readings
Hau’ofa, Epeli. “The Ocean in Us.” The Contemporary Pacific 10, no. 2 (1998): 392-410.