Les Brigittines

Ocean reflections: performing arts and decolonial ecology

Recent reflections in the performing arts and postcolonial studies have made it abundantly clear that the ocean can no longer be seen as some romantic European trope of the unlimited. Rather, they are challenging colonial and anthropocentric notions of history and ecology.

At this conference, positions are reviewed such as artist John Akomfrah's video installation Vertigo Sea (UK, 2015), Selina Thompson’s performance Salt (UK, 2016) or Patricio Guzmán's documentary film El Botón de Nácar (Chili, 2015), in which the ocean appears as a repository of memory and trauma, and as an infrastructural precondition of colonial exploitation. These contributions show to what extent the performing arts can be conceived as what environmental researcher and engineer Malcolm Ferdinand has called 'decolonial ecology'.

Julia Schade is a postdoctoral researcher in media studies at the Ruhr University in Bochum. Her research questions the survival of colonialism in relation to the performing arts. She also collaborates with the German artist and choreographer Eva Meyer-Keller.

As part of the event Ici commence la mer.