3. How to Wade Through Water? Storytelling as a Method

The fall semester of OCEAN / UNI 2021 begins by asking not why or what to research, but how. To wade through water, to walk through a fluid substance—the current of a shallow river, the edge of a littoral zone, or the heart of a lagoon—requires slowing down and adapting one’s way of moving to the pressure of a thick and liquid medium. This means we need to think through careful and continuous observation of the world, rather than after it. [1] Wading is an act that brings awareness of tidal or seasonal temporalities, touching and haptic ways of knowing, of feeling through water and the overflow of experience.

An oceanic existence implies a constant state of becoming that thrives on open trails of exploration instead of appropriation or conquest. To conceive, tell, and hear stories is to engage with contexts and lifeways in relation [2] —it is a viscous form of research, a mode of learning by doing and engaging with existing conditions. It entails thinking of a place as an intricate net of the relations and forms of knowledge that populate it, rather than something pristine to conquer and box into fixed categories. [3] It is an approach to exploration that implies crossing the same path over and over again and never exhausting the possibilities that unfold along this itinerary.

By making space for stories that unwind the logics of accumulation and extraction pervading the Ocean, OCEAN / UNI welcomes perspectives that are intertwined with alternative ways of knowing, of organizing communities and modes of living together, attentive to non-binary, feminist, Indigenous, and decolonial approaches in ocean observation and conservation.

Storytelling opens up paths for scientific knowledge and traditional ecological knowledge to intersect and pollinate each other. The series unfolds through six methodologies, offered as live possibilities for storytelling to generate knowledge, put it to use, and pass it along. We ask ourselves which modes of narrating, listening, archiving, playing, translating, and locating can be employed to reimagine and rewrite our histories, to stay present and attentive, and to create possibilities for other worlds to come into being.

In this impulse resonate the words of feminist writer Ursula K. Le Guin in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, an essay-tale where Le Guin imagines technology and science as a carrier bag, a container to bring food home. In her eyes, a story is a bag, a belly, a box, a house or a medicine, a container for things contained, a tool that serves to sustain life and memory and to resist and replace the “killer story,” a trajectory of human progress centered around the heroic narrative of violence and domination. [4]

Hegemonic systems of knowledge have manifested actions of asymmetry, exploitation, and violence over and through the Ocean. We are seeking mutual methodologies for wading through the littered histories of these murky waters—to train ourselves into the unease of immersion in an unfamiliar medium, to slow down and find other currents.

[1] Tim Ingold, “Anthropology Between Art and Science: An Essay on the Meaning of Research,” Field issue 11 (fall 2018), http://field-journal.com/issue-11/anthropology-between-art-and-science-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-research.
[2] Judy Iseke, “Indigenous Storytelling as Research,” International Review of Qualitative Research (November 2013).
[3] Ingold, ibid.
[4] Ursula K. Le Guin, The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction (London: Ignota Books, 2019 [1986]).

In correspondence with the main acts, five workshops are curated by current Fellows of TBA21–Academy’s 2021 Ocean Fellowship. By offering a space to employ the explored methodologies, the activations provoke advancement from theory to practice, and invite participants to engage and respond. Workshops will open for registration in the preceding weeks.

Wednesday, 6 October
PROLOGUE: LISTENING
“Keep awake, keep listening. / The tide comes in fast”
Keynote speaker: Wanda Nanibush, Anishinaabe-kwe curator, artist and educator based in Toronto, Ontario. Curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario and Shaul Bassi, Associate Professor of English literature, Ca' Foscari University of Venice; Meredith Root-Bernstein, CNRS research scientist, Natural History Museum in Paris, and teacher of the GEO—DESIGN course, Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands.

Thursday 14 October
SPECIAL MOMENT: ANTHROPOCENE CAMPUS
In collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Hybrid event: online and at Ocean Space, Venice.
With: Cristina Baldacci, Senior Researcher at Ca' Foscari University of Venice; Shaul Bassi, Associate Professor of English literature, Ca' Foscari University of Venice; Giorgio Andreotta Calò, artist; Barbara Casavecchia, curator and writer, leader of The Current III, TBA21–Academy.

Wednesday, 20 October,
FIRST ACT: ARCHIVING
SESSION: “We need to tell and tell until all our stories are standing with us.”
With: Michelle Caswell, Associate Professor of Archival Studies in the Department of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles; Raphaël Grisey, artist. Session curated by the Ocean Fellows and Mentors 2021.

Wednesday, 27 October
ACTIVATION: ON ARCHIVING
On Plastic as Archive
Led by: Ohan Breiding, artist and Shoghig Halajian, curator and researcher, Ocean Fellows 2021.
With: Michal Kučerák, Digital Content Manager, TBA21–Academy.

Wednesday, 3 November
SECOND ACT: NARRATING
SESSION: “the story as i remember it”
In collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. With: Valentina Bonifacio, Associate Professor in Applied and Visual Anthropology at Ca' Foscari University of Venice; Macarena Gómez-Barris, Professor and Chairperson of Social Science and Cultural Studies at Pratt Institute, New York; Amanda Choo Quan, writer and poet.

Wednesday, 10 November
ACTIVATION: ON NARRATING
"Yo soy yo y mis circunstancias"
Led by: Ella Navot, Ocean Fellow 2021. With: Pietro Consolandi, researcher and artist, former Ocean Fellow.

Wednesday, 17 November
THIRD ACT: PLAYING
SESSION: “Anyone can direct the situation"
In collaboration with Institut Kunst, FHNW Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Switzerland. With: Isabel Lewis, artist; Quinn Latimer, poet and critic; Chus Martínez, Curator of Ocean Space 2021-2022.

Wednesday, 24 November
ACTIVATION: ON PLAYING
The body as a narrative tool
Led by: Elisa Giuliano, dancer, choreographer, and architect; Ocean Fellow 2020. With: Beatrice Forchini, Research and Education Programmer.

Wednesday, 1 December
FOURTH ACT: LOCATING
SESSION: “The inundated need no instruction in inundation”
In collaboration with GEO—DESIGN, Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands.
With: Formafantasma, designers and heads of the GEO—DESIGN department, Design Academy Eindhoven, The Netherlands; Ayla Kekhia, designer, art director, and visual researcher and 2nd year GEO-Design student; Francesca Tambussi, social designer; Giuditta Vendrame, designer, artist and researcher.

Wednesday, 8 December
ACTIVATION: ON LOCATING
Locating the in-between: drifting through liminal spaces
Led by: Zoé Le Voyer, Ocean Fellow 2021 and co-founder of collective Calypso36°21. With: Beatrice Forchini, Research and Education Programmer, TBA21–Academy.

Wednesday, 15 December
FIFTH ACT: TRANSLATING
SESSION: “The prefix trans~ promises movements across”
With: Alexandra Boghosian, polar geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, and Ocean Fellow 2020; Charne Lavery, Lecturer, Department of English University of Pretoria, Researcher, Oceanic Humanities for the Global South, WiSER; and Skye Moret, marine scientist and designer at the Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Thursday, 16 December
ACTIVATION: ON TRANSLATING
Kitchen Non-Confidential: Adventures in Culinary Translation
Led by: Rosalyn D'Mello; author, art critic, columnist, researcher, lecturer and Ocean Fellowship 2021 Mentor
With: Katarina Rakušcek, Content Strategist, TBA21–Academy