Ocean Imagination and Ocean Action: Contemporary Art Institutions as Agents for Ocean Sustainability
TBA21–Academy Artist Film Program
13 June 2025
Ocean Imagination and Ocean Action is a program of screenings featuring engaging and inspiring artist films, commissioned by TBA21–Academy, dedicated to exploring the state of the Ocean and advocating for a more-than-human sensitivity to underwater life.
This film program is conceived to instigate ocean imagination and ocean action while the most pressing issues regarding the future of the Ocean are being debated. The films act as a gentle reminder from the arts of the central role the rich underwater life plays in planetary thriving—including the thriving of humans—bringing forth the multiplicity of underwater sensibilities as part of the governance of the seas and its resources.
The selection of recently commissioned films includes creative documentary films on the central topic of deep-sea mining, animations blending the human and animal voices into a unified chorus for cohabitation, and imaginative journeys from Pacific and Caribbean people carrying ancestral knowledge and invoking forms of staying attuned to the water ecosystems. Imagining what we fail to see and proposing actions to restore our ecosystem is a central drive of the art and artists that we honor and support with the inclusion of this film program at the High-Level Event 2025 UN Ocean Conference (UNOC 3).