OCEAN / UNI
bárawa pt.2
February 19 –
March 19, 2025
Design: Pardo; T.O.T Studio
TBA21–Academy
Programming
Ocean-Archive.org
EN/ES
bàrawa, borrowing its title from the Garifuna word for "Ocean", is a cycle of OCEAN / UNI led by Yina Jiménez Suriel and Pietro Consolandi that inquires into the topics of Caribbean worldviews, from the cultural processes of Marronage, the entanglements of underwater life with the constant movement of tectonic plates, and the connection between humans and nature. After the cycle’s first semester, Fall 2024, which set the historical and scientific foundation of our inquiry, the second semester looks into poetry, ecology, philosophy, and art.
What is the role of the subconscious in connecting humans to the oceanic depths? Do islands and seamounts have agency, perhaps even a consciousness, of their own? How do the winds communicate with living beings, beyond facilitating their movements? How do tropical forests keep memories of their past? These are some of the questions that will guide the five sessions of the second semester of bárawa, moving through the Caribbean together with the underwater mountains that walk through the Ocean.
bàrawa, borrowing its title from the Garifuna word for "Ocean", is a cycle of OCEAN / UNI led by Yina Jiménez Suriel and Pietro Consolandi that inquires into the topics of Caribbean worldviews, from the cultural processes of Marronage, the entanglements of underwater life with the constant movement of tectonic plates, and the connection between humans and nature. After the cycle’s first semester, Fall 2024, which set the historical and scientific foundation of our inquiry, the second semester looks into poetry, ecology, philosophy, and art.
What is the role of the subconscious in connecting humans to the oceanic depths? Do islands and seamounts have agency, perhaps even a consciousness, of their own? How do the winds communicate with living beings, beyond facilitating their movements? How do tropical forests keep memories of their past? These are some of the questions that will guide the five sessions of the second semester of bárawa, moving through the Caribbean together with the underwater mountains that walk through the Ocean.
METHODOLOGY
aba fahoü lubaron bárawa[1] from the portion of the skin of the planet that we call the “Caribbean Tectonic Plate”, convenes a discussion on contemporary emancipatory processes by intertwining the regional evolution of the Ocean with the experience of Marronage and the aesthetic tool and strategy of improvisation~freestyle.
The methodology of this OCEAN / UNI program is based on the notion of sedimentation as a way of weaving seemingly unrelated yet intertemporally layered material-topics. During the two semesters, people involved in the research and new guests will share reflections on the areas of work that make up the research developed through The Current IV, whose main thesis poses the Ocean as the epicenter of contemporary emancipatory processes and what it means to approach this thesis from the context of the Caribbean.
aba fahoü lubaron bárawa[1] from the portion of the skin of the planet that we call the “Caribbean Tectonic Plate”, convenes a discussion on contemporary emancipatory processes by intertwining the regional evolution of the Ocean with the experience of Marronage and the aesthetic tool and strategy of improvisation~freestyle.
The methodology of this OCEAN / UNI program is based on the notion of sedimentation as a way of weaving seemingly unrelated yet intertemporally layered material-topics. During the two semesters, people involved in the research and new guests will share reflections on the areas of work that make up the research developed through The Current IV, whose main thesis poses the Ocean as the epicenter of contemporary emancipatory processes and what it means to approach this thesis from the context of the Caribbean.
WHO CAN PARTICIPATE & REGISTRATION
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.
REGISTRATION FORM FOR OCEAN / UNI SESSIONS HERE
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.
REGISTRATION FORM FOR OCEAN / UNI SESSIONS HERE
ACTIVATIONS
Webs of Water
TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with Tactical Tech’s “Exposing the Invisible” project and artist-researcher Federico Pérez Villoro, invites applications for “Webs of Water”, an online activation series exploring the relationship between technology infrastructures, freshwater scarcity and water distribution issues in the Caribbean.
Taking place from March to May 2025, this program invites journalists, researchers, artists, scientists, and activists to collaboratively investigate the environmental impact of tech industries on water access. Participants will analyze the physical and geopolitical dimensions of computing infrastructures through workshops and collective mapping. The series will culminate in the creation of public knowledge resources hosted on Ocean-Archive.org, inspiring further research and action.
More information HERE.
Calypsonian Writing
Kayla Archer, a writer from Barbados, leads a writing workshop inspired by the Calypso, a Caribbean performative art that draws from the West African Griot. In Calypso, music and oratory blend in a ritual in which the public, the chorus, the Masters of Ceremony, and the Caller Calypsonian, all co-create a transformative experience via resonance of language. Born in a time of decolonial strife in which the imperial structures were coming undone, Calypso holds a major political and community-based relevance, and includes in itself an oceanic perspective.
The public activation held on February 12 will allow participants to gain an understanding of the history and methodology of Calypso. Later during the cycle, a group of scientists from SINAMOT, University of Costa Rica, will engage in an in-depth calypsonian writing experiment to translate into Calypso their scientific work on the tectonic plate movement in the Caribbean.
Webs of Water
TBA21–Academy, in collaboration with Tactical Tech’s “Exposing the Invisible” project and artist-researcher Federico Pérez Villoro, invites applications for “Webs of Water”, an online activation series exploring the relationship between technology infrastructures, freshwater scarcity and water distribution issues in the Caribbean.
Taking place from March to May 2025, this program invites journalists, researchers, artists, scientists, and activists to collaboratively investigate the environmental impact of tech industries on water access. Participants will analyze the physical and geopolitical dimensions of computing infrastructures through workshops and collective mapping. The series will culminate in the creation of public knowledge resources hosted on Ocean-Archive.org, inspiring further research and action.
More information HERE.
Calypsonian Writing
Kayla Archer, a writer from Barbados, leads a writing workshop inspired by the Calypso, a Caribbean performative art that draws from the West African Griot. In Calypso, music and oratory blend in a ritual in which the public, the chorus, the Masters of Ceremony, and the Caller Calypsonian, all co-create a transformative experience via resonance of language. Born in a time of decolonial strife in which the imperial structures were coming undone, Calypso holds a major political and community-based relevance, and includes in itself an oceanic perspective.
The public activation held on February 12 will allow participants to gain an understanding of the history and methodology of Calypso. Later during the cycle, a group of scientists from SINAMOT, University of Costa Rica, will engage in an in-depth calypsonian writing experiment to translate into Calypso their scientific work on the tectonic plate movement in the Caribbean.
CALL FOR JOURNEYS
Along with participation in the sessions, TBA21–Academy is commissioning texts to enrich the curriculum by adding other perspectives to the featured topics. We encourage applicants to be mindful of their situatedness to avoid appropriating the knowledges of other communities and instead draw connections with case studies within their own geographies.
This is a call to OCEAN / UNI participants and ocean comm/uni/ty members who find any of the topics of this coming semester especially resonant and would like to be featured with their writing on Ocean-Archive.org’s Journeys page.
See more details and directly apply via this Google Form no later than February 10, 2025.
Along with participation in the sessions, TBA21–Academy is commissioning texts to enrich the curriculum by adding other perspectives to the featured topics. We encourage applicants to be mindful of their situatedness to avoid appropriating the knowledges of other communities and instead draw connections with case studies within their own geographies.
This is a call to OCEAN / UNI participants and ocean comm/uni/ty members who find any of the topics of this coming semester especially resonant and would like to be featured with their writing on Ocean-Archive.org’s Journeys page.
See more details and directly apply via this Google Form no later than February 10, 2025.
CRITICAL OCEAN LITERACY
The methodologies of OCEAN / UNI aim to create spaces of collaborative work, coalitional thinking, and solidarity to generate new pedagogies and ways of researching that go beyond words, grown from feeling. This sensitivity to the oceanic elaborates a critical ocean literacy that extends a factual comprehension of the mutual influence between us and the Ocean, moving deeper into thinking through the Ocean.
Performed individually and collectively, such acts can blend in different kinds of knowledge and release us from coded connections to wander through the Ocean’s rhythms, poetry, and biology; through these fluid processes of hybridization we might come to grasp and communicate our ecological crisis.
Learning through sensing, familiarity, and the body can ignite joy and healing, can grow affinity with otherness. Telling stories—and coming together to listen—can access cosmic timescales, can weave motives and planetary movements into the spaces between data points. How do the ways in which we talk to each other, gather, listen, and learn matter and create kinship? By welcoming worldviews originating in different densities and humidities, latitudes and altitudes, perhaps a new critical perspective could arise, one that can tell the story of the fragile interconnectedness of our biosphere, empowering humans and nonhumans to wade toward a space of balanced coexistence.
Learning about the Ocean is the strongest tool we have to protect it: becoming “ocean literate” is not just a way to gather facts, but to reclaim power.
The methodologies of OCEAN / UNI aim to create spaces of collaborative work, coalitional thinking, and solidarity to generate new pedagogies and ways of researching that go beyond words, grown from feeling. This sensitivity to the oceanic elaborates a critical ocean literacy that extends a factual comprehension of the mutual influence between us and the Ocean, moving deeper into thinking through the Ocean.
Performed individually and collectively, such acts can blend in different kinds of knowledge and release us from coded connections to wander through the Ocean’s rhythms, poetry, and biology; through these fluid processes of hybridization we might come to grasp and communicate our ecological crisis.
Learning through sensing, familiarity, and the body can ignite joy and healing, can grow affinity with otherness. Telling stories—and coming together to listen—can access cosmic timescales, can weave motives and planetary movements into the spaces between data points. How do the ways in which we talk to each other, gather, listen, and learn matter and create kinship? By welcoming worldviews originating in different densities and humidities, latitudes and altitudes, perhaps a new critical perspective could arise, one that can tell the story of the fragile interconnectedness of our biosphere, empowering humans and nonhumans to wade toward a space of balanced coexistence.
Learning about the Ocean is the strongest tool we have to protect it: becoming “ocean literate” is not just a way to gather facts, but to reclaim power.
ABOUT OCEAN / UNI
OCEAN / UNI is an initiative dedicated to art, activism, and science that invites fluid thinking with the Ocean as a way to move beyond the binaries of land and sea. OCEAN / UNI's curriculum provides students, researchers, and the public with access to wide-ranging ideas and explorations through regular live sessions, reading groups, small-scale workshops or activations, and other online material, free and accessible to everyone on Ocean-Archive.org.
Aiming to complement and enhance land-based understanding of the Earth, OCEAN / UNI covers a wide range of ecological, political, aesthetic, ethical, and scientific topics around the realities and futures of the Ocean.
OCEAN / UNI is an initiative dedicated to art, activism, and science that invites fluid thinking with the Ocean as a way to move beyond the binaries of land and sea. OCEAN / UNI's curriculum provides students, researchers, and the public with access to wide-ranging ideas and explorations through regular live sessions, reading groups, small-scale workshops or activations, and other online material, free and accessible to everyone on Ocean-Archive.org.
Aiming to complement and enhance land-based understanding of the Earth, OCEAN / UNI covers a wide range of ecological, political, aesthetic, ethical, and scientific topics around the realities and futures of the Ocean.
[1] This phrase means “a journey to the Ocean” in the Garífuna Guatemalan language. Translated by Clairon García, who participated in Flotation 1 of The Current IV.