OCEAN FELLOWSHIP 2020
Summer School #2: Phenomenal Ocean. Ocean Space, Chiesa di San Lorenzo, Venice, September 23-27, 2019. Photo by Enrico Fiorese.
TBA21–Academy
Residencies
Ocean Space Venice
Launched in 2020 by TBA21–Academy in conjunction with “Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation”, an exhibition curated by Daniela Zyman, the Ocean Fellowship is a three-month residential research program held at Ocean Space. Eight fellows and two mentors are invited to Venice to conduct research and participate in the Ocean Curriculum in relation to the exhibitions at Ocean Space. The paid Fellowship supports participants to work at novel knowledge and practice intersections on and with the oceans in a time of climate and ecological emergency.
For this program, TBA21-Academy hosts scholars and practitioners from across disciplines to convene for a short but intense period of co-research and development on Oceanic topics. It reflects the Academy’s long-standing practice of mobilizing art and science to promote ocean literacy, advocacy, and action. Crafted through a wide network of scientists, arts practitioners, activists, and collaborators, the Ocean Fellowship fosters critical discourse and imaginative possibilities around the current status and future of the oceans in a perilous moment.
In the course of the global pandemic of COVID-19, the first Ocean Fellowship, initially conceived to take place in Venice from March 2020, has been translated into a series of online components and programs featured on Ocean Archive. This open access online archive and learning platform, initiated by TBA21–Academy, hosts the digital manifestation of the exhibition “Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation”.
CURRENT PROGRAM
The Ocean Fellowship unfolds over three months through a unique and undisciplined Ocean Curriculum. The program strives to ferment rigorous but disobedient knowledge and ‘deep learning’ to grapple with transformations acting upon the Oceans in the so-called Anthropocene, the current period of Earth’s history defined by abrupt environmental changes triggered by human activities. Oceans play a fundamental role in driving the biogeochemical cycles that control climate, so that it’s crucial to conceive new ways for making evident their radically changing conditions, often ignored, or voluntarily removed from the public sphere.
This Ocean Curriculum flows from and feeds into the annual exhibition program “Oceans in Transformation” by Territorial Agency. Through direct engagements with Territorial Agency, Fellows are immersed in the research and materials behind the artistic production. As a mode of learning, the program presents Fellows with the opportunity to theorize, trace, and publicly mediate the art-science commissions developed by the TBA21–Academy.
Proceeding along a supported but horizontal structure, the Curriculum drifts in, around, and through the “Oceans in Transformation” exhibition in ways that clarify the Fellowship as novel pedagogical art-science practice. By contributing to and expanding on the knowledge and discourses of the exhibition, the Fellowship inverts the roles of mentors and student; artist and viewer. Fellows have the opportunity to interface with and draw from every element of TBA21–Academy’s curatorial, research and institutional program, which is instrumentalized as an evolving knowledge resource and experimental laboratory.
During the program, Fellows engage in activities of sharing and mediating across various formats, such as internal conversations, reading groups, fieldwork and archive research, public presentations, multimedia productions and interactions with the public. Fellows also contribute to and co-organize Messy Studios—a series of meetings and summits conceptualized by Territorial Agency, where ocean thinkers and practitioners from different fields discuss direct solutions, unfolding the respective territorial and disciplinary boundaries and engaging the public directly. Alongside these collaborative activities, Fellows are guided in the development of their own individual research agendas and introduced to institutions, associations, and professionals that are relevant to these in Venice and internationally. Ocean Fellows are encouraged to contribute short essays, writings, visuals or other forms of content—charting the progress of their research on to the Ocean Archive—such that the inputs and outputs of the Fellowship form sedimentations upon which future cohorts will build and develop.
For this program, TBA21-Academy hosts scholars and practitioners from across disciplines to convene for a short but intense period of co-research and development on Oceanic topics. It reflects the Academy’s long-standing practice of mobilizing art and science to promote ocean literacy, advocacy, and action. Crafted through a wide network of scientists, arts practitioners, activists, and collaborators, the Ocean Fellowship fosters critical discourse and imaginative possibilities around the current status and future of the oceans in a perilous moment.
In the course of the global pandemic of COVID-19, the first Ocean Fellowship, initially conceived to take place in Venice from March 2020, has been translated into a series of online components and programs featured on Ocean Archive. This open access online archive and learning platform, initiated by TBA21–Academy, hosts the digital manifestation of the exhibition “Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation”.
CURRENT PROGRAM
The Ocean Fellowship unfolds over three months through a unique and undisciplined Ocean Curriculum. The program strives to ferment rigorous but disobedient knowledge and ‘deep learning’ to grapple with transformations acting upon the Oceans in the so-called Anthropocene, the current period of Earth’s history defined by abrupt environmental changes triggered by human activities. Oceans play a fundamental role in driving the biogeochemical cycles that control climate, so that it’s crucial to conceive new ways for making evident their radically changing conditions, often ignored, or voluntarily removed from the public sphere.
This Ocean Curriculum flows from and feeds into the annual exhibition program “Oceans in Transformation” by Territorial Agency. Through direct engagements with Territorial Agency, Fellows are immersed in the research and materials behind the artistic production. As a mode of learning, the program presents Fellows with the opportunity to theorize, trace, and publicly mediate the art-science commissions developed by the TBA21–Academy.
Proceeding along a supported but horizontal structure, the Curriculum drifts in, around, and through the “Oceans in Transformation” exhibition in ways that clarify the Fellowship as novel pedagogical art-science practice. By contributing to and expanding on the knowledge and discourses of the exhibition, the Fellowship inverts the roles of mentors and student; artist and viewer. Fellows have the opportunity to interface with and draw from every element of TBA21–Academy’s curatorial, research and institutional program, which is instrumentalized as an evolving knowledge resource and experimental laboratory.
During the program, Fellows engage in activities of sharing and mediating across various formats, such as internal conversations, reading groups, fieldwork and archive research, public presentations, multimedia productions and interactions with the public. Fellows also contribute to and co-organize Messy Studios—a series of meetings and summits conceptualized by Territorial Agency, where ocean thinkers and practitioners from different fields discuss direct solutions, unfolding the respective territorial and disciplinary boundaries and engaging the public directly. Alongside these collaborative activities, Fellows are guided in the development of their own individual research agendas and introduced to institutions, associations, and professionals that are relevant to these in Venice and internationally. Ocean Fellows are encouraged to contribute short essays, writings, visuals or other forms of content—charting the progress of their research on to the Ocean Archive—such that the inputs and outputs of the Fellowship form sedimentations upon which future cohorts will build and develop.