Faculty member Skye Moret collaborates on Climate Justice for a Living Ocean

{Image: Skye Moret, Antarctica: a Chromatic Paradox, 2015. Digital interface.}

Scientist, designer and CD/DS faculty member Skye Moret is currently working on a visionary project that will bring together stakeholders operating at the intersection of scientific inquiry, artistic intelligence, and environmental advocacy, the Ocean Archive. The Ocean Archive will be a digital platform, archive and repository for collaborative research. Bringing together TBA21 Academy expeditions, artistic outputs and production data with a multiplicity of archives and records produced by scientists, communities and policy-makers collaborating with the Academy and beyond, the Ocean Archive will enable users to search across a variety of catalogues enabling increased search ability and discoverability. Users will be exposed to the diversity of vantage points, perspectives and knowledge systems on the ocean and its form as it is being shaped by historical and current ways of living and administering the seas. The Ocean Archive will be a pedagogical-, research- and storytelling tool for a wide audience, translating current knowledge about the ocean into a common ground aimed to enable us to take better decisions for urgently needed policies. The Ocean Archive will launch on September 28, 2019 as an online platform committed to the following objectives:

• Host and produce material by a multiplicity of voices to share human and non-human stories of the ocean across various media;
• Render visible and discoverable a range of disciplinary perspectives and connect individuals, groups, and institutions committed to a living ocean;
• Create novel webs of knowledge by facilitating ocean explorations through archive material and supporting synergies among the arts, sciences, and policy.

Call for collaborators Ocean-Archive.org invites arts and culture organizations worldwide to join a network of autonomous responses on September 28, 2019. Prior to Climate Justice for a Living Ocean, Ocean-Archive.org will distribute a video compilation to all collaborating organizations; these event partners are welcome to use the video as a point of departure for curating their own localized responses, events, and conversations. By supporting local initiatives for ocean conservation and protection, these partner events will create spaces to gather community around shared concerns and collective actions.

The global movement for climate justice is growing stronger and more vibrant as environmental activists call attention to the crises of biodiversity extermination and climate change. Climate Justice for a Living Ocean is prompted by the release of the forthcoming Special Report on the Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, to be issued by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The event at the Ocean Space in Venice, Italy, convenes a network of artists, activists, scientists, policy experts, and frontline community leaders to critically examine the implications of the report. It will review the report’s dire statistics to emphasize the urgency of coordinated climate action. But, the event will also focus on current initiatives, ongoing and future actions, and localized responses to ask: how would the state of the ocean change if existing conservation efforts were amplified and expanded? How can bolder politics and policies ensure meaningful commitments to ocean health? What cultural practices, literacies, and imaginaries can be shared and fostered across oceans to avert climate catastrophe?

Sponsored by TBA21 Academy, which leads artists, scientists, and policy-makers on expeditions of collaborative discovery onboard a research vessel. The Academy is dedicated to fostering a deeper understanding of the ocean through the lens of art and to engendering creative solutions to its most pressing issues. Ongoing and past initiatives include the development of the Alligator Head Marine Lab in collaboration with the University of the West Indies, which resulted in the establishment of the largest privately backed fish sanctuary in Jamaica and a site-specific exhibition on the Isla de Coco with works by leading contemporary artists including Marina Abramovic, Ed Ruscha, Olafur Eliasson, Doug Aitken and many more. TBA21 Academy is also the first art institution to be granted an Observer status in the UN International Seabed Authority. More information can be found here.