Collective workshop “O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A. (Occasions Creating Ecologically Attuned Narratives in Collective Action)”

After her first encounter with Ocean Space in 2021 as part of “The Soul Expanding Ocean” cycle curated by Chus Martínez, Isabel Lewis returns to Ocean Space on Wednesday, June 22, for a special open workshop on O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A. (Occasions Creating Ecologically Attuned Narratives in Collective Action), the exhibition-performance she developed last year, commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy.

The selected performers of 2021 will be joined by the students of the Class for Performative Arts of The Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB). Students, participants, and visitors are invited to Campo San Lorenzo as if they are inside the waters of the Oceans, the bodies taken by the currents and the voice integrated in the piece as a political component, a marker of Venice’s long traditions of choirs, communal politics, music and sound as an identity trait.

No reservation is necessary to join the workshop.

“O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A.” is an invitation to attune to our continuity with the Ocean to transform and articulate a different relation. Lewis asks participants to be careful with the language pertaining to the Ocean, be aware of the questions it poses and open to unexpected findings.

In this piece—specifically created for TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space and Venice and for the Oceans—Lewis takes inspiration from Augusto Boal’s ‘Theatre of the Oppressed’, a set of dramatic techniques which aim to bring to light systemic exploitation and oppression, in order to discover ocean life inside us. She creates a situational choreography where the boundaries between performance and spectatorship fade, and the very real living conditions and labor struggles across society materialize together, and find an interlocutor in the Ocean.

“O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A. (Occasions Creating Ecologically Attuned Narratives in Collective Action)” was part of the curatorial cycle “The Soul Expanding Ocean” curated by Chus Martínez, commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy at Ocean Space, Venice, 2021. Supported by ifa | Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

The workshop is organized in collaboration with the Class for Performative Arts of The Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) and is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) of Germany, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and by the European Union through the Erasmus program.

PHOTO: Isabel Lewis, O.C.E.A.N.I.C.A. (Occasions Creating Ecologically Attuned Narratives in Collective Action), 2021. Exhibition-performance “The Soul Expanding Ocean #2: Isabel Lewis”, Ocean Space, Venice. Commissioned and produced by TBA21–Academy. Photo: Kinonauts