OCEAN / UNI: bárawa

Bárawa... what a word convenes, what the Ocean convenes as an entity:

The Caribbean began in the fire and continues in the water. The deep time that constitutes us is made of fire, sediments, crystals, grains and water, lots of water. To speak of the Ocean from our coordinates is to enter into relationship with the skin of the planet on which we live, which itself has an oceanic origin, according to one of the most widely accepted theories in western science: the skin of the planet that we call the Caribbean Tectonic Plate was created at a hotspot where today lie the archipelago of Galápagos Islands, so the plate’s main composition has an oceanic character; hence, thinking the Caribbean has much to do with the Pacific. Just as Epeli Hau‘ofa looked to us at the end of the last century to signal the then recent processes of independence, we look to him to borrow a paragraph from his essay “Our Sea of Islands” as one of the main provocations of the two OCEAN / UNI semesters conceived with The Current IV. We are interested in transcending the deterministic perspective imposed on the region since the 15th century that narrates it as an exclusively insular context or as a context divided into three parts: insular, isthmus and continental; the constant in both narratives: fragmentation.

"Do people in most of Oceania live in tiny confined spaces? The answer is yes if one believes what certain social scientists are saying. [...] Their calculation is based entirely on the extent of the land surfaces they see.

But if we look at the myths, legends, and oral traditions, and the cosmologies of the peoples of Oceania, it becomes evident that they did not conceive of their world in such microscopic proportions. Their universe comprised not only land surfaces, but the surrounding ocean as far as they could traverse and exploit it, the underworld with its fire-controlling and earth-shaking denizens, and the heavens above with their hierarchies of powerful gods and named stars and constellations that people could count on to guide their ways across the seas."

To paraphrase Hau‘ofa, fragmentation is a state of mind; if we walk along the bottom of the Caribbean Sea we will realize that we do not inhabit islands, isthmuses or continental lands, but a succession of mountains among waters. Fragmentation is a state of mind imposed by the colonial enterprise and its consequent nation-states in this skin of the planet. Just as geological bodies interrelate, so do other forms of life, including the human species, and they do so beyond verbal language, they do so through aesthetic tools and strategies that have little to do with verbal language, they do so through layers and layers of sensory sediment that have little to do with verbal language. They have done it throughout time, with the most recent trace found in the fugue that began cimarronaje – the maroonage – as a process. Bárawa is the word in the Garífuna language used in Guatemala to refer to the Ocean. The Garífuna nation is a community constituted by marronage and by water that persists to this day.

The Caribbean began in the fire and continues in the water. The deep time that constitutes us is made of fire, sediments, crystals, grains and water. Although we do not know the quantity, much of that water comes from the bodies of people from native communities and the African continent enslaved by the European colonial empires, and the bodies of citizens of nation-states whose passports cannot cross the imaginary border lines imposed by the internal dynamics of each state and the neocolonial dynamics in the region. Hence, deepening our relationship with Bárawa means deepening our relationship with the ancestors of the human species that compose us. Hence, to talk about Bárawa from our coordinates means to decolonize our subconscious. Hence, to talk about Bárawa from our coordinates means to broaden ideas of what’s possible.

The Caribbean began in the fire and continues in the water, which is why we are moving towards other mountains, adrift beneath the waves, proposing an oceanic perspective of the region, an oceanic perspective of this skin of the planet.

• Session 1: Prologue – On the journey towards constant movement
  Wednesday, October 9, 2024
  Topic and keywords: Maroonage, Fugue, Floatation, Shipwrecks
  Guest: Dénètem Touam Bona, Philosopher and Artist
  Language: FRENCH // Live translation into English and Spanish
  
  

• Session 2: On geo-dialectics to relate with constant movement
  Wednesday, October 16, 2024
  Topic and keywords: Evolution of tectonic plates in the Caribbean, Orogenesis
  Guests: Monique Johnson, Geologist; Khadija Stewart, Environmental Activist, as respondent
  Language: ENGLISH // Live translation into Spanish
  
  

• Activation 1 – Thursday, October 24, 2024
  Khadija Stewart, Environmental Activist – Caribbean Ecological Activism
  
  

• Session 3: On Freestyle~Improvisation as aesthetic tool and strategy
  Wednesday, October 30, 2024
  Topic and keywords: Body movement, Emancipation, Dream processes
  Guests: Yewande YoYo Odunubi, Artist; Isabel Lewis, Artist, as respondent
  Language: ENGLISH // Live translation into Spanish
  
  

• Activation 2 – Wednesday, November 6
  Isabel Lewis, Artist – Moving bodies
  
  

• Session 4: On the Ocean and subjectivity = to build imaginations
  Wednesday, November 13, 2024
  Topic and keywords: Subjectivity, Unconscious
  Guest: dani valencia sepúlveda, Writer and Educator, Editor in Chief of Terremoto Magazine
  Language: SPANISH // Live translation into English
  
  

• Activation 3 – Wednesday, November 20
  Kayla Archer, Writer – Calypsonian writing
  
  

• Session 5: On storytelling for constant fugue
  Wednesday, November 27, 2024
  Topic and keywords: Maroon choreography, Storytelling
  Guest: fahima ifemi, Writer, Associate Professor of Black Aesthetics & Poetics at University of California Santa Cruz
  Language: ENGLISH // Live translation into Spanish

The program is intended for anyone eager to deepen their relations with the ecological, political, aesthetic, ethical, and scientific knowledges around the realities and futures of the Ocean. Lectures will be held in English or Spanish with direct translation between the two languages, so a good listening and speaking level of either is recommended to ensure meaningful exchange.

Participants are invited to register for the program online to receive Zoom links and session reminders. Zoom links, session information and recordings can also be found on the ocean comm/uni/ty platform. You are welcome to register in advance for more than one session. If you attend all five sessions, you will receive an official certificate of attendance upon request.

Please visit TBA21–Academy website to find out more about it.