DOWN ALIVE TO WONDROUS DEPTHS

Coordinated by the Institute for Postnatural Studies, this symposium will broaden the imagery the artist Wu Tsang created through her exhibition Of Whales. Focusing on the ocean as a place of opportunity from which to tell hidden stories, marginal narratives, and tales of coexistence, the submerged worlds of the marine depths will be explored to vindicate the fluid, the states in which bodies, identities, histories and ideas cannot be discussed in static or binary terms. Through international voices of science, art, and ecology, the subjects addressed will include acoustic ecology, flows and migrations, the slave trade, and the deterioration of biodiversity, and questions will be raised to think about the oceans from a contemporary perspective, weaving new narratives that will entwine biology and history, matter and myth.

Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano presented his most recent projects around water and technology, focused on telepathy as a way of relating to distance and otherness through depth and humidity. As part of these reflections, he shared his latest work on the Atlantis-2 undersea fiber optic cable—the first to connect Europe and South America—and on the pink dolphin from the Orinoco River, a mythological being trapped by coltan mining and hydroelectric infrastructure.

Performativity of Matter (by Huniti Goldox, Eliza Goldox & Areej Huniti) unveiled new or hidden terrains that made or unmade geographies and their material composition. Huniti Goldox’s research on erotic ecology, enforced mutation, and water politics over the last 4.5 years guided the different touchpoints of the screening lecture. Through video works, soundscapes, and digital re-enactments, the frame offered insights into the interconnectedness of ecological and geopolitical realities—realities that demanded active engagement with the world in revealing the lines of power affecting present ecological concerns such as resource scarcity, ecosystem collapse, extraction, and dispossession.