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Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries, this year’s edition of the Sea Art Festival, is inviting us to rethink our relationship with the sea, referring to the beauty but at the same time, the fragility of our shores, and exploring alternative frameworks and visions for engaging with the ocean and marine environments.
The sea is deeply embedded in our lives and capitalist society, a vital source for our survival, but also a vast industry we exploit for food, medicines, energy, minerals, trading, travel and so on. But increased human activity, from extensive cruise tourism, shipping and overfishing to nuclear testing, pollution and deep-sea mining have been plaguing the sea, having a huge impact on marine ecosystems and habitats.
Instead of viewing the sea from the coast as a divided and abstract surface for moving around commodities, Flickering Shores, Sea Imaginaries reminds us that we are part of this body of water. This year's Sea Art Festival aims to explore new relationships with the sea and its ecologies, enabling spaces for cooperation, collective visions and synergies as a call to resistance and restoration.
Robertina Šebjanič is an internationally exhibited artist/researcher whose work explores the bio-chemical, (geo)political, and cultural realities of aquatic environments and the impact of humanity on other organisms. Her projects call for developing empathetic strategies aimed at recognizing the Other. In her analysis of the Anthropocene and its theoretical framework, the artist uses the terms “aquatocene” and “aquaforming” to refer to the human impact on aquatic environments. Her works have received awards and nominations at the Prix Ars Electronica, Starts Prize, Falling Walls, and RE:Humanism.
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Liquid Time (Jacob Bolton & Miriam Matthiessen), a research duo working around shipping, finance, and the temporalities of maritime worlds, was established in 2023. Jacob Bolton is an architectural researcher interested in supply chain violence and resource struggle. Miriam Matthiessen is a researcher interested in critical logistics and urban political ecology. Together with Eliza Ader, they also run the Abandoned Seafarer Map, an online (counter)-mapping project tracking the systemic abandonment of seafarers by ship owners and the shipping industry at large.
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Kim Doki is deeply interested in the various layers of the world in which we live and the universe as a whole, including nature and life, society and culture, matter and energy, and time and space. Kim uses immaterial media such as light, heat, gravity, and language to create works that depict phenomena that interact with matter. By continually asking questions about what we are and how we exist, Kim’s works are at times as scientific as they are philosophical, while at other times being equally poetic and shamanic.
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The Mariana Trench is the deepest point in the ocean, extending nearly 36,000 feet down in a remote part of the Pacific Ocean. One might think that the deep sea such as at this point in the Pacific might be a dark, lifeless place, and a place with no signs of human activity. But recent explorations showed that not only the Mariana Trench is a place of diverse life, including different species such as corals, octopus and jellyfish, this deep ocean, remote place couldn’t escape human impact as plastic and chemical pollutants have also reached the deepest parts of the ocean.
Currently up to 199 million tons of plastic are polluting our oceans, and if we continue to produce so much plastic, by 2050, our oceans will have more plastic than fish, continuing to affect marine life, fisheries, coastlines, tourism, and our food chain.
Studio 1750, taking as a starting point their previous work Parallel Gardens (2018), they have created an imaginary garden, an artificially changing environment that alludes to environments being transformed by human intervention, but also to a bizarre coral-reef like structure. This new installation and almost alien environment, Aquatic Garden, invites visitors to a walk-through, while assuming the role of a new and peculiar species that mutates and evolves due to environmental or genetic influences in order to survive such an unnatural environment. Mutation, an “error” in DNA replication or resulting from damaging effects of pollution, radiation or chemicals, becomes a battle coming to terms with loss. In this performative, but also playful and interactive installation, the artists are expressing their concerns and anxieties for a world changing towards the unknown.
Aren’t we humans, who are inhabiting cities of desires made up of artificial structures, objects and artificial gardens, accelerating the spread of new viruses as errors of our collective “intelligence”? In the present, living in a future that was feared in the past - we hope it is now the time to ask questions about what the sea means to us and what future we imagine for this ecosystem.
Visitors are invited to make a sea creature paper hat at the Sea Art Festival Lab to wear and be part of the installation.
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Robertina Šebjanič’s immersive sonic installations and environments often create spaces where human and nature or human and non-human creatures meet, exploring their relationships and interconnected worlds, but also tensions between these ecologies.
Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales is a new immersive sound installation created specifically for the Sea Art Festival, and bringing together underwater sounds and sounds from marine life collected by the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST), alongside human voices and song.
By engaging in a cross-empathic sympathy exploration of concepts and analytical methods from the marine world, Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales delves into more-than-human oceanic ecologies, geographies, and cultures as an entangled web of interdependencies in planetary watery imaginaries.
Interdisciplinary and poetic, the work serves as an activation of empathic sympathy towards oceanic creatures that reside beneath the waves and express their messages through the poetry of Their songs while reflecting deeply on our actions and their direct impact on the seas and oceans. Robertina’s work, exploring animal-human and interspecies communication through interdisciplinary research and art-science exchange, addresses ecological consequences and underwater noise pollution in oceans and seas across the world.
Tidal Whispers: Busan's Oceanic Tales weaves together aquatic and human stories, sciences and mythologies presenting and celebrating the resilience of marine species, while opening up a world view, where all creatures and living entities have a shared experience and are deeply connected, no matter how small or large, visible or invisible they are.
Credits
Artist: Robertina Šebjanič
Text, music, textile, audio: Robertina Šebjanič (SIovenia)
Narrators, voice: Polona Torkar (Slovenia) and Pilljae Kim (Slovenia / South Korea)
Recording of voice and mastering: Rok Kovatch (Slovenia)
Field recordings: KIOST | Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology
Architecture support of the installation: studioentropia
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Eunhae Jung and Zune Lee have collaborated on this installation creating mandala patterns from small and micro-ocean plastics generating visualizations of the earth’s frequency.
The plastic fragments have been collected from Hamden beach on Jeju island, in five years of activity collecting ocean plastics with volunteers and members of ECOOROT, an eco-art organization founded by Eunhae Jung. The mandala patterns here are generated using the Schumann Resonance - a series of resonating electromagnetic waves, driven by lightning activity, also known as the Earth’s “heartbeat” or “hum”.
Thunderstorms roll over Earth producing about 50 flashes of lightning per second and creating electromagnetic waves captured between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere. Some of these waves combine to create a repeating atmospheric heartbeat or the Schumann resonance, an extremely low frequency at an average of 7.83 Hz.
Scientists have discovered that variations in the resonances correspond to changes in the seasons, solar activity, or activity in Earth's magnetic environment and other Earth-bound phenomena. There are theories that the earth’s vibrations are rising which can cause us anxiety, and although there is not hard scientific evidence for this, this theory emphasizes that we are most calm when our brain waves overlaps with the earth’s vibration, so maybe, the Schumann Resonance is a reminder of our connection and close relationship with the Earth.
Eunhae, since her childhood, wondered what this ever-present low sound was, which she was able to hear when everything else was quiet, but recently realized that many people can’t hear it.
Eunhae and the ECOOROT participants kneeling on the sand, stroking it with repetitive moves collecting microplastics while hearing the ocean sounds in the background, become part of a visceral experience that feels like a ritual or prayer. In the mother’s womb, the sound was experienced through tactile receptors. Sound was the touch.
The inspiration of Plastic Mandala came from the Tibetan Buddhist ceremony, where monks create a beautiful and colorful sand mandala for days to weeks, and when it’s complete, they dismantle it. Then they carry the sand, blessed and now blessing itself, and pour it into a nearby stream of water so that it will be flown into the ocean and to all living beings connected through the one ocean that connects us all.
The artwork expresses a sense of despair facing our plastic culture and the wish to bless the ocean by taking plastic out of the ocean. The artwork is complete when it is dismantled. It will not be turned into something new, useful, or permanent.
You can watch a video from a Plastic Mandala made by ECOOROT participants here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjd1t9OWC2I&t=302s
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Can art help us extend our empathy beyond what we know and see in our immediate surroundings?
Stars On the Sea is a story about the environment that surrounds us. A mother and her young children are seen in a domestic space, while the building is filling up with water. They are moving higher up in the building to escape the already flooded floors, only for more water to reach them. As time passes by, and they have now reached the top, they are trapped in what looks like a vast flooded landscape with floating dwellings.
Jang Seungwook is using human characters in his animation, but in fact they could represent any other living creature. This becomes more evident as the work progresses. For the artist, the situation the creatures face here is not much different from what any other living being would face, but what the main characters in the work symbolize is ultimately who we are.
It symbolizes us (human and non-human) who have no choice but to live on this earth. The environment, our planet is one of the important things we must pass on to the next generation. So, if we were in the place of the mother in this work, what would we do?
‘Noah’s Ark’ appears in the animation in one of the children’s story books. Rather than foreshadowing their salvation, it talks about the coming 'water crisis'. The ark symbolizes salvation in the book, but in reality, the characters fight through harsh conditions in order to survive. In one scene, the family watches TV at home, which presents part of a previous work of the artist. By including these scenes acted out by one character focused on himself and looking only at himself, it alludes to human selfishness.
Jang Seungwook created this work with sorrow and heartbreak, watching countless lives silently enduring the consequences of events for which they bear no direct responsibility. Through the images of those who appear like shining stars in the sky in the last scene, he wants to convey the responsibility we have as people living in this era, the affection, respect, and concern for disappearing creatures, and the hope that their images will not become ours.
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Mangroves forests form a vital ecosystem, connecting land and sea. Found in tropical and sub-tropical areas all over the world, mangroves provide shelter and food for young marine life, works as a barrier against floodings, and it is an important tool to help us mitigate climate change.
Renata Padovan’s interest in mangroves originates from her research concerning ecological and socio-cultural issues deriving from the neglectful exploitation of ecosystems. As a biome, mangroves are extremely important. They occupy coastal zones acting as an interface between marine and terrestrial environments. They constitute the breeding grounds for a diversity of fish, shrimp, crabs, shellfish, the nesting sites for many birds, and the feeding grounds for a myriad of terrestrial and aquatic species.
Furthermore, the forests and the muddy soil constitute an extremely effective carbon sink. Mangroves protect coastal areas from erosion and tsunamis. The muddy soil absorbs polluting
substances that are discharged in watercourses, ending up in the estuaries, such as pesticides and heavy metals from mining activities. Today, mangroves are among the most endangered habitats in the world, due mainly to coastal developments, logging and shrimp aquaculture.
To be inside of a mangrove forest is an overwhelming experience. The sounds, the incredible design of the tangled roots and embracing patterns of the tree trunks, the filtered light that comes from the canopies, it is magical.
During an immersion in a still pristine mangrove forest in northern Brazil, conscious of the devastation of the biome in many other areas in the artist’s country and around the world, Renata Padovan conceived this artwork that would call the public’s attention to this disregarded ecosystem, generating awareness about its importance and the urgent need for its preservation.
Explore more about mangroves in Renata Padovan’s short film, Transition Zone:
https://vimeo.com/843273956
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