entangled seas and mediterranean interconnections

an invitation to exchange knowledge, approaches and experiences within the mediterranean sea

The purpose of the meetings is to generate hospitable conditions for the approach between scientists and artists in order to exchange practices, reflections and ideas related to the Mediterranean Sea. One of the main starting points of the proposal is the conception of the sea as vibrant matter, that is, as a living entity that harbors many worlds and that, far from being disconnected from other bodies and materialities, is in intimate interdependent connection with human and more than human entities. It is an invitation to approach, from different perspectives, diverse approaches that explore, in some way, the question of what relationships/entanglements we can/want to imagine/interweave with/within the company of the Mediterranean Sea, from an anti-colonial and reparative perspective.

This activity is curated by Mafe Moscoso.

program

friday, 10th of january at La Escocesa

15:30 h

Presentation of the meetings and participants

16:00 h
marine microbiology: the essential is invisible to our eyes
Vanessa Balagué

The oceans occupy 71% of the surface of our planet and affect many aspects of our lives, such as fish production, oxygen synthesis, atmospheric CO2 capture and climate regulation. Beneath the surface of the sea lies a vast and complex microscopic world that is essential to the functioning and well-being of our planet, because everything is connected!

17:30 h
thinking with waves
Sonia Fernández-Pan

"Thinking with waves" is a presentation-balance that arises from desire and from a confluence: that of oral memory with the memory of water and seas from the "corona under the ocean" podcast series. Making the stories happen again and keep moving in several directions at the same time -this time towards the Mediterranean-, the intention is to misplace stable senses or directions thanks to narrative impulses that make a story from the shared experience.

19:00 h
my body the sea: birth, life and death (on-line participation)¹
Sally Fenaux Barleycorn

An invitation to break with the narrative of the individual human body and perceive a much more inter-connected, dependent and indivisible system: The human being as a cell of a larger body, the earth. In the body as well as in the cell, water becomes essential: water to be born, water to live, water to die and water for the crying that comforts nothing. From this process emerges the short film UNBURIED (2019).

saturday, 11th of february

10:00 h - La Escocesa
that summer of 22
Lorenzo Sandoval

That Summer of '22 is a documentary about the collapse of the Mar Menor, a saltwater lagoon in the Campo de Cartagena in southern Spain. The summer of 2022 witnessed a radical increase in global temperatures, and it will be worse for the coming summers. This increase is one of the direct effects of climate change. In 2019 and 2021 there were two episodes of anoxia, with more than 90% mortality of fauna. The collapse of the Mar Menor is an oracle that shows what can happen to biodiversity in the sea. It also shows the process that puts ecosystems in this type of situation: a worldview that feeds extractivism. Mining (in La Unión), construction (in La Manga) and agro-industry (around the Mar Menor) are present in the area and are interconnected. These three elements give structure to the film, which is divided into three interwoven chapters.

[This activity will take place at La Escocesa. Then, we will all go by subway to Barceloneta to continue with the program. The cost of transportation will be covered by each participant. In case this means of transport is not accessible for you, please let us know through the access form of La Escocesa to try to find a suitable solution to your needs].

11:30 h - Barcelonate beach
mediterranean in polyphony: exchange from its regional rivers
Daniela Medina Poch

As a border space, fluid and at the same time fragmented, the Mediterranean has been a projected surface of contested and disputed futures through which privileged nations have homogenized their heterogeneity, thus exercising, and in other ways, a systematic violence towards different forms of life. Mediterráneas en polifonía: Intercambio desde sus ríos regionales is an installation~performance that seeks to amplify some of the systematically invisibilized imaginaries of the Mediterranean from the perspective of its regional rivers. Through an attentive and careful listening to the memories and affective relationships that, while alive, keep the currents of the Mediterranean flowing, "Mediterranean in polyphony: exchange from its regional rivers" seeks to contribute to shift the Eurocentric gaze of the Mediterranean(s) and to highlight that the Mediterranean and its plural identities are dynamic processes in constant reconfiguration.

13:30 h - Sindicato de Estibadoras y estibadores de Barceloneta
follow the fish¹
Papa Laye (Top Manta) + Marina Monsonís

We will talk through a dish that we will cook collectively, -that joins the African culinary tradition and the typical cuisine of Barceloneta's ranch with local fish from the fish market bought in the neighborhood market-. We will learn about forgotten fish species and their forms of cooking and recognition, we will share our memories, experiences and connections with and about the sea, we will relate violence, problems and points of view around the fishing sector and how it affects our lives interconnected with the sea and forced to an increasingly accentuated disconnection, but above all we will focus on the disaster generated by the exploitation and fishing extractivism in times of climate crisis in the African coasts, we will serve a popular delicacy, an oceanic geopolitics on the plate, a diasporic and situated dish that will also include initiatives and forms of conscious, joyful eating, taking into account our environment and the web of interconnected lives. All of this at the table of the Sindicato de Estibadoras y estibadores de Barceloneta.

¹ The organization covers the food for all the participants. Therefore, it is very important to cancel in case you don't finally attend to this activity to facilitate the coordination of the event.

speakers

Mafe Moscoso, teacher and researcher at BAU, Centro Universitario de Arte y Diseño de Barcelona. She is part of Gredits. She works and researches between/through/from the crossings in between writing, art and ethnography, from an anti-racist and trans-feminist perspective. Her questions are currently situated in experimental methodologies, ethnofiction and water.

Vanessa Balagué Marine microbiologist and member of the Marine Scientific Culture Committee at the Institut de Ciències del Mar (CSIC) in Barcelona. She has conducted oceanographic campaigns in the Arctic, Antarctic, Atlantic, Mediterranean and Baltic. She is currently interested in the possible dialogues between science and art.

Sonia Fernández Pan writes, curates projects and produces podcasts. She grew up in an Atlantic hinterland, moving to the Mediterranean for years. She currently lives in a city that was once a swamp.

Sally Fenaux Barleycorn is a screenwriter, artist and Buddhist meditation guide. She specializes in the transformative potential of stories, both the ones we produce and the ones we tell ourselves.

Lorenzo Sandoval is an artist. He develops his work interspersing different media such as film, sculpture, sound, spatial production, editing, curatorship or installations. In his practice he analyzes divergent genealogies of subjects such as computation, photography or industrial processes with the Shadow Writing project. He collaborates regularly with institutions such as SAVVY Contemporary, Archive or IVAM. He has recently received support from TBA21 to develop the research Throat/Brazo/Surco and Shadow Writing (Geometry of Water). In 2015 she founded The Institute for Endotic Research.

Daniela Medina Poch (she, Bogotá) is a visual artist and researcher based in Berlin. Through an intersectional gaze, her work seeks to contribute to the conception of ecocentric narratives that balance some of the asymmetrical power relations in the understandings and administrations of environments that have been historically extracted. Working from the specificities of certain contexts, his practice is developed through performance-sculptures, large-scale installations, expanded listening spaces, collective platforms and the formulation of discursive language.

Papa Laye is part of the Popular Union of Street Vendors of Barcelona TOP MANTA. The union was created in October 2015 to denounce persecution, discrimination and institutional racism. Our dreams were not to be manteros, but fishermen.

Marina Monsonís visual artist who works constellating art, community kitchens and politics. She runs the CUINA at MACBA - (in the context of the ecosocial crisis) since its inception 2018. She is co-author of the book La Cocina Situada. A dictionary for food sovereignty (GGILI, 2012), she is long committed and emotionally connected to the domestic memory, the radical geography and the doings connected to the sea of her native neighborhood: La Barceloneta, she shares collective cooking with the Fundició about the agricultural and fishing past of pre-industrial Barcelona through popular cuisine, she is part of the artistic team Tools for a Warming Planet. A collective archive of tools for climate resilience.

This activity is part of Cosmovisions on land and entangled futures, a partnership between Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (UK), Capc Bordeaux (FR), La Escocesa (ES), Más Arte Más Acción (COL) and Pivô (BR). It is funded by the British Council’s International Collaboration Grants, which are designed to support UK and overseas organisations to collaborate on international arts projects.

organises

La Escocesa and GREDITS (BAU)