Seaside Arts and Low-Trophic Imaginaries
30 September – 1 October 2021
Ornö, Stockholm Archipleago, Sweden + online

All through the extended history of Earth, the coastline has been a zone of unrest, where waves and tides have forged life and land on this planet. Oceanic algae, once terraforming the Earth into a breathable planet, still produce most of our oxygen. Today, beaches and oceans are haunted by plastic waste, eutrophication and diminishing biological diversity. Kelp forests and mussel beds (and all the ther species that depend on them) are receding with the warming waters of climate change. Yet, as also remarked by late marine biologist Rachel Carson, the edge of the seam remains a strange and beautiful place. We think it is a sanctuary for co-creation and worldly re-imaginings. The marine wrack zone, a boundary area between sea and land, hosts low-trophic species, like mussels and seaweeds, and it harbours marine hope. Like the commons bladder wrack in the Blatic Sea, it mitigates the eutrophication of the sea and provides shelter for all kinds of creatures and creativities.

The State of the Art Network (SOTAN) mid-term event Seaside Arts and Low-Trophic Imaginaries, hosted by The Posthumanities Hub and The Eco- and Bioart Lab, welcomes artistic and scientific entanglements with the environmental humanities to the seaside. This workshop invites salinity to brackish times by bringing together environmental engineers (like bladder wrack), sea garden activists, artists, feminist blue humanities scholars, marine biologists and those with local know-how for a situated encounter by the edge of the sea. The aim of the event is to re-tool our oceanic imaginary with insights and creative suggestions for how humans can be a more caring and attentive ecological force for multispecies futures by the edge of the Baltic Sea.

Below a short documentary of the event. You can find recordings of the keynotes and panels held at the event on the shared Youtube channel of Posthumanities Hub and the Eco- and Bioart Lab.

Learn more about the event on the Posthumanities Hub website.

State of the Art Network is supported by Nordic Culture Point, Nordic Culture Fund, and A. P. Møller Foundation.

State of the Art Network (SOTAN), initiated and headed by Bioart Society in Finland, is a Nordic-Baltic transdisciplinary network of artists, practitioners, researchers, and organisations who have come together to discuss the role, responsibility, and potential of art and culture in the Anthropocene. By developing creative practices, transdisciplinary collaborations, and public engagement, the network aims to create resilience and concrete actions for living the change in culture, economy, and environment, and to find concrete hands- on methods to deal with the Anthropocene and environmental crisis. The network wants to strengthen competencies in remote hosting and participation as well as practical sustainability.