The Current II: Deep Sea Minding & Spheric Ocean

The Current's second cycle unfolded as two parallel investigations into the Ocean as both ecological reality and philosophical provocation: Deep Sea Minding, led by SUPERFLEX, and Spheric Ocean, led by Chus Martínez. Both strands united artists and scientists to rethink humanity's relationship with marine life, challenging paradigms of otherness in favor of cohabitation and care. While Deep Sea Minding grounded itself in speculative design, Spheric Ocean pursued a more philosophically and pedagogically oriented inquiry.

“As seawater level rises, fish will conquer our quotidian spaces, and we, humans, are fully responsible for preparing our habitat for these future residents.” 

—SUPERFLEX

Under the artistic leadership of SUPERFLEX, Deep Sea Minding merged artistic and scientific research to develop an alternative understanding of marine species that could ultimately affect the way we imagine and design our environments and objects. Generating relevant data and raising awareness of rising sea levels, Deep Sea Minding proposed creating structures that could serve the needs and desires of both humans and marine creatures. 

Participants of the cycle include  Dr. Barbara Imhof, Dr. Dayne Buddo, Dr. Alex Jordan, Jun Kamei, Maureen Penjueli, Eva Hayward, Shanee Stopnitzky, Jónsi (Sigur Rós), Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Cecilia Bengolea, Camila Jaber, Joey Tau, and others.

“Spheric Ocean shows us a simple fact: there is no 'otherness' in the ocean, and therefore, what should distinguish our actions is not the impulse to conquer, possess, or explore, but the need to learn and understand.” 

—Chus Martínez

Spheric Ocean was a philosophical exercise on artistic intelligence, science, and nature in search of new language and pedagogies for equality and social justice. This cycle has set the space to feel and think differently about the oceans, springing from the urge to reunite thinkers and artists to start a new school of sensing intelligence. The program centered on dismantling planetary violence, devising new methods of interhuman and interspecies cohabitation, and unlearning the Western paradigms of power and inequality. 

Participants of the cycle include Ingo Niermann, Claudia Comte, Eduardo Navarro, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Marah Hardt, Diva Amon, Julieta Aranda, Teresa Solar, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Albert Serra, Cecilia Bengolea, Georgia Sagri, Donna Kukama, DIS.art, Alexander Tarakhovsky, Niño de Elche, and others.