(Un)Tamed Sea Symposium

The (Un)Tamed Sea Symposium will explore topics, such as the impact of human activity on oceanic ecosystems, the environmental and socio-political challenges the sea faces, and the evolving understanding of the ocean beyond traditional landscapes. The event includes panel discussions on underwater explosives, the ocean’s role in capitalism, and the urgent need for a more equitable and sustainable approach to ocean politics. The guest speakers ranging from scholars to artists aim to foster dialogue on pressing global issues and deepening our knowledge of the sea.

Programme

Friday, 7 March

11.00 CET, panel discussion
Below the Horizon
with: Robertina Šebjanič, Silvio Vujičić, Miro Roman & Igor Eškinja
When we say that the sea is an inspiration for artists, the first association is often coastal or maritime landscapes. However, the more we learn about the sea, the deeper we dive into the processes occurring in the ocean and underwater — processes driven by human activity. As our understanding evolves, so does the meaning we assign to the sea.
The artists participating in this exhibition have engaged in a long-term dialogue with various approaches to the sea, expanding their knowledge and creating works that encourage us to think about the ocean beyond conventional frameworks. This conversation with them is an opportunity to share that knowledge with us.

13.00 CET, lecture
Exploring the Capitalocene Ocean. An Experiment in Collective Knowledge Production
with: Ana Jeinić
The notion of the ocean as a pristine expanse, isolated from human culture and technology, is far from reality. In what historian and geographer Jason W. Moore terms the Capitalocene, both human and non-human inhabitants of marine and coastal regions are deeply embedded in multi-scalar metabolic processes intrinsic to the capitalist mode of socio-ecological (re)production.
Despite the urgency of transforming these planetary circuits, comprehensive and transcultural forms of popular oceanic knowledge remain scarce, hindered by language barriers and disciplinary divides. Referencing ‘Komuna Maro,’ an arts-based research project led by Ana Jeinić, the lecture discusses possibilities for overcoming these gaps.

Ana Jeinić is an architectural and spatial theorist, curator and utopianist. She is co-editor of the volume Is There (Anti)Neoliberal Architecture? (2013) and author of numerous academic articles, essays and speculations in the fields of architectural and landscape theory, infrastructure policy, critical ocean and island studies, speculative design, and utopia. Since October 2023, she has been the principal investigator of the FWF-funded artistic research project Komuna Maro at the Institute of Contemporary Art (IZK) at Graz University of Technology.

18.00 CET, lecture
Murky Waters — Between Oceanic Sublime and Maritime Opacity
by Alejandro Colás

Depth, vastness and mutability are properties of the sea which for different peoples and in diverse contexts have produced an ‘oceanic sublime’ that invokes both fear and reverence. The impossibility of leaving a permanent trace on the sea’s surface means for some that our saltwater world is unconquerable and therefore ‘nobody’s property’. Yet this very sense of ungovernable freedom has been central to bourgeois utopias that celebrate the sea as horizon of possibility, and site not only of transport, surveillance and expansion, but also for the profitable enterprise of protein capture, mineral extraction, energy generation, and bioprospecting.

Alejandro Colás is Professor of International Relations at Birkbeck, University of London. He has written extensively in the historical sociology of international politics, most recently with Liam Campling, Capitalism and the Sea: the Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World (2021). He is also the author of International Civil Society (2002), Empire (2007) and a co-author of Food, Politics, and Society (2018).

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Saturday, 8 March

11.00 CET, panel discussion
Explosive Ordnance in the Sea
with: Jacek Bełdowski, Tihomir Bošnjak & Lovro Maglić

Until recently, it was widely believed that explosive devices and munitions in the sea did not pose a serious threat, as they would simply be covered by sediment. However, as has happened many times before, this belief was more a matter of hope than fact. For the past 20 years, it has become clear that the corrosion process is faster than sedimentation and that as explosives and munitions degrade, they alter the chemical composition of the seawater. Removing explosive materials from the ocean is a dangerous and painstaking task. This panel offers an opportunity to learn about the chemical processes occurring as these devices interact with the marine environment, as well as the methods used to safely extract them from the sea.

Jacek Bełdowski: Dumped munitions — increasing evidence of impact on marine environment
Tihomir Bošnjak: Ministry of the Interior Activities in Detecting, Removing, Disarming, and Destroying Unexploded Ordnance in the Sea
Lovro Maglić: Raising Awareness of Underwater UXO

13:00, lecture
Ocean Politics in a Time of Crisis, lecture
Chris Armstrong

Our future depends on a healthy ocean. But the ocean is facing a crisis of environmental destruction. It is also facing a crisis of inequality, as ocean industries enrich some but not others. This talk will explore how contemporary ocean politics has failed us so badly, and how we can do better. Recognising the problems of the present is the first step towards a genuinely just and democratic politics of the ocean.

Organized by Drugo more & Oaza

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