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Ranging from 1,000 m – 4,000 m below sea level, the bathypelagic defines a maritime zone beneath the threshold of sunlight. Also
dubbed the ʻmidnight zoneʼ, it accounts for the largest ecosystem on earth. For a long time, into the 19th century, humans have
perceived the bathypelagic as a ʻvoid,ʼ not only largely absent of life but nature without culture and without the potential for cultivation.
Apart from its inaccessibility to humans, the otherness of life in the deep is one of the reasons that the bathypelagic has not been
colonized by humans and has resisted capitalist readings of nature-as-resource: between the upper ocean regions (e.g. fishery,
transportation, military use) and the seafloor (e.g. oil and gas drilling, submarine communications cables) not much seems available for
extraction. Yet, it is heavily affected by man-made environmental change such as deep-sea pollution and climate change and the
well-being of its inhabitants is crucial to planetary health. Until today, lot of these human-made effects on the bathypelagicʼs ecology
have not been researched. Equally, there has been little regard for the bathypelagic as a focus in art and cultural theory. Only few
contemporary approaches integrate this depth ecology into broader discourses on the Anthropocene, ecocriticism, and posthumanism
(Haraway 2008 and 2016, Flusser 2012). Slowly, do we humans begin to understand that relating to the “dark ecology” (Cohen 2014)
of the bathypelagic means to shift away from established epistemologies, to challenge anthropocentric (ʻsurface-levelʼ) views of the
world and to develop new practices of sensing, engaging and caring.
The project “CURATING THE BATHYPELAGIC” asks for reconsidering the bathypelagic as a transformative space to foster new
relational ethics of multispecies dialogue in diverse, poetical, multimodal and more-than-human ways. As a break-out session from the
larger CURATING THE BATHYPELAGIC project, the seminar “MEET THE SPONGES” is centered around the so-called deep-sea
cabinet containing microscopic preparations of glass sponges which were collected by Franz Eilhard Schulze (1840–1921), the founder
of the HU Zoological Teaching Collection as part of the Valdivia deep sea expedition (1898–99). The glass sponges are a very old
group of organisms, with filigrane and flexible glass skeletons. They are able to procreate in sexual and asexual ways and some live in
symbiosis with other organisms. Their ancestorsʼ bodies are covering and structuring much of the planetʼs seafloors.
In the seminar, students will be introduced to theories and practices of accessing, and queering collections, transversal curating, artistic
research methodology, and excercises in establishing new relational aesthetics and ethics between deep sea creatures and humans.
As the outcome, students prepare (individual, in small groups, in exchange with academic and societal actors) curatorial concepts and
chapters/sections for an exhibition. Their work includes presenting and/or performing exhibits such as artifacts, written and oral history,
and works of art, and a concise curatorial narrative and dramaturgy. |
| Literatur |
Chun, C. (Ed.). (1902–1940). Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem Dampfer 'Valdivia' 1898-1899. Jena, Germany:
Gustav Fischer.
Cohen, J. J. (Ed.). (2013). Prismatic ecology: Ecotheory beyond green. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctt46npx0
DeLoughrey, E. M. (2019). Allegories of the Anthropocene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478005580
George, R. Y. and Wiebe, S. M. (2020) ʻFluid Decolonial Futures: Water as a Life, Ocean Citizenship and Seascape Relationalityʼ, New Political Science, 42
(4), pp. 498–520.
Hackett, J., & Harrington, S. (Eds.). (2017). Beasts of the deep: Sea creatures and popular culture. Bloomington, IN: John Libbey Publishing.
Haraway, D. (2016). Staying with the trouble : making kin in the Chthulucene. Duke University Press.
Lobo, M., & Parsons, M. (2023). Decolonizing ocean spaces: Saltwater co-belonging and responsibilities. Progress in Environmental Geography, 2(1-2),
128-140.
Rozwadowski, H. M. (2005). Fathoming the ocean: The discovery and exploration of the deep sea. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Schulze, F. E. (1904). Hexactinelliden des Tiefen Meeres. In C. Chun (Ed.), Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Tiefsee-Expedition auf dem
Dampfer 'Valdivia' 1898-1899 (Vol. 4, pp. 1–266). Jena, Germany: Gustav Fischer. |
