Money, Ruins, and the Sea
https://www.neme.org/projects/a-sea-change/money-ruins-and-the-sea
Introduction
In order to implement new concerns in its programme, continue developing its audience, and to further consolidate its international network, NeMe has invited Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, Creative Director of Future Everything, Manchester, to curate a project on the relevance of the sea in Mediterranean economies and ecologies. The subject matter is extremely relevant to Cyprus as for many years, tourism has been our main industry, and the sun, sea, and sand, our main product promoted by that industry. NeMe’s intention is to initiate a critical inquiry, through the eyes of international artists and theorists, about Cypriot subjects which have not been adequately locally questioned.
The Money, Ruins, and the Sea project, curated by Papadimitriou brings together academics, artists, environmentalists, and other professionals in a creative exchange, conversations and networking around related topics focusing on the sea. The curation’s goal is to establish and sustain a long-term socio-economic research programme exploring how finance relates to the coastal cities and the sea, how it impacts the environment and how it can be reimagined to contribute to the environmental and social agenda. From examining the complex and sometimes unknown ways in which money and the sea might be related throughout history, to opening up discussions around issues surrounding economies, labour, opaque markets and climate change, _Money, Ruins, and the Sea investigated ideas and questions including whether money and finance can be green or regulated for environmental change, what innovative strategies we can create for ecological good and what knowledge systems we might need and from/with whom.
Curator’s concept
The World Bank Group defines blue economy as “a sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, improved livelihoods and jobs, and ocean ecosystem health, from renewable energy, fisheries and maritime transport, to tourism, climate change, and waste management.” 1 It is clear that oceans and seas play an essential role in the global economy, with maritime activities contributing up to 7% to the world’s GDP. 2 At the same time, they also regulate the global climate and are protected by the Paris Agreement, which acknowledges their integral role in the climate balance.
Globally, oceans and seas are under immensely high pressure with many unsustainable marine-related activities causing irreversible damage. One of the viral images and top global news stories illustrating this urgency was the one of a recent cargo vessel blockage in the Suez Canal: estimated at $1 billion worth loss, the incident closing one of the entries to the Mediterranean Sea exposed not only the vulnerability of the maritime supply chain, but also the environmental consequences of this heavily polluting industry growing at a pace inconsistent with the limits of a liveable planet. Incursion of the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 brought new problems to countries dependent on tourism income, with many respected economists stating that the main consequences of this collapse are yet to arrive. This critical moment in history is making us aware that we are all part of an interconnected global community that includes a vast number of species, biological and technological systems, and that our very existence depends on acknowledging, respecting as well as transforming these connections.
In this context, the Mediterranean Sea is becoming more and more endangered as it is in fact one of the most active bodies of water of extreme economic importance representing 33% of the global tourist flow (UfM, 2021), 15% of global shipping, and 62% of fish for human consumption expected to be produced in the region by 2030 (WWF, 2019).
Today, the Mediterranean region is at a turning point, facing long expected exploitation consequences as well as new disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, from environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, dramatic sea level rises, pollution and overfishing, to desalination and deep-sea fracking, all accompanied by political, social, and communications crisis. The negative consequences of economic activities have provoked many reactions from organisations, institutions and supranational political bodies calling for immediate implementation of sustainable blue economy models in the region. Among others, the European Commission issued a Blue Economy report calling for “all Blue Economy sectors to reduce their climate and environmental impact and contribute to the recovery of marine systems,” 3 while The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) advocated for the Blue Recovery Strategy and addressed directly the governments of the Mediterranean countries as hotspots of the global climate and environmental crisis.
As both sea and land are progressively ‘rationalized’ by increasingly sophisticated industrial methods, does the ‘classic’ relation between terrestrial space and maritime space undergo a reversal? Does the sea become fixed and the land fluid? 4
Throughout the ages, seas and oceans have been and continue to be providing immense resources to many people and countries worldwide. A source of food, jobs, energy, minerals, goods and services, as well as a site for trading routes, cross-cultural exchange and migration, the sea and ocean have always been central to many industries and world economies. “Global capitalism is a seaborne phenomenon” state authors Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás in the opening line of their recent book introduction, Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. 5
And indeed, if we take a moment to think about the supply chain, the fact is that global trade and more precisely about 90% of goods we consume are transported around the world with ocean shipping. So pretty much everything we are surrounded by has arrived to us after being on a long journey across the world in a shipping container. So sea’s role in distributing worldwide commodities that most people have ignored until now, became quite apparent back in March 2021 when Ever Given, the huge container ship, got stuck and then blocked the Suez Canal for days causing a massive global trade disruption, as everyone rushed on their screens and real-time interactive maps like MarineTraffic watching Ever Green wedged across the waterway in Suez, while all other ships either stuck there waiting or taking alternative routes, mainly around Africa. Not to mention the numerous containers stuck in ports around the world due to the pandemic, resulting in shipping delays, prohibitive costs and in some cases even empty shelves. It is actually quite astonishing to see the amount of vessels and sea traffic on any of these real-time tracking maps; it certainly makes the ocean look more like an avenue rather than how one would imagine an ocean to be.
To go back to Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás, it’s important to understand the connection between the marine and terrestrial and how this relation has been intensified under capitalism “incorporating the oceans into the law of value, extending maritime commodity frontiers and attempting in the process to ‘flatten’ the geophysical division between solid ground and fluid water.” 6 As it’s also important to understand the connections between consumer society, humans and nature and how our society focuses on profit and eternal growth rather than questioning how our activity might be impacting the planet. An important thing we seem to ignore is how the sea and ocean absorb greenhouse gases and generate oxygen, storing big amounts of CO2 and playing a significant role in climate change mitigation. And although we are talking here about more than two thirds of our planet’s surface covered in water, we have still managed with ongoing and ever expanding pollution, toxic activities and discharges to be causing the fast acidification and warming of waters that can have catastrophic consequences for our planet. A recent UN Environment Programme report states that “8 million tonnes of plastic end up in the world’s oceans every year” 7 and warns that if this continues, plastic in our oceans could exceed fish by 2050.
It is indeed ironic that some companies pursuing deep sea mining activity to harvest sought after minerals and metals claim this operation as less destructive than land mining, despite our limited knowledge of the deep seas and their ecologies. Even though commercial deep-sea mining operations have not started yet, it is quite disconcerting that the International Seabed Authority (ISA) is under ongoing pressure and has already issued exploration licenses enabling a new gold rush. The argument is that there is a growing demand for powering up our electronics and electric cars, but as one would expect there is no clear regulation, a comprehensive governance system or questioning about who would benefit or who would be impacted from such activity.
To paraphrase Andreas Malm in Fossil Capital, exploring the development and history of fossil economy from the 19th century coal-powered steam engine, what has been created is a system of power for exploiting human and natural resources, a system that is still operating today and continues to fuel injustice. 8 So if ocean exploitation operating without rules continues to grow, what would this mean for the future of the planet, human and non-human entities?
Fish Story, Allan Sekula’s important and complex work published in 1995, where he explores the ocean as a space of globalisation, deregulated labour and exploitation, couldn’t be more relevant today. For Allan Sekula “factories become mobile, ship-like, as ships become increasingly indistinguishable from trucks and trains, and seaways lose their difference from highways. Thus the new fluidity of terrestrial production is based on the routinisation and even entrenchment of maritime movement. Nothing is predictable beyond the ceaseless regularity of the shuttle between variable end-points. This historical change reverses the “classical” relationship between the fixity of the land and the fluidity of the sea.” 9
And as it’s obvious by now, sea itself becomes a factory to satisfy our needs and greed, but also a place and utopia for the land’s elite to potentially escape from regulations, governments and national borders.
Ocean colonisation, sea capitalism, exploitation and commodification, but also their environmental and social impacts are explored in this exhibition and related programme. A site of trade, migration and cross-cultural exchange, the sea has always been and continues to be an important supply for the economy, but ongoing exploitation of maritime resources, real estate development and global environmental changes are endangering our planet’s marine ecologies. Bringing together work by artists, researchers and scholars, Money, Ruins, and the Sea aims to open up critical conversation and creative exchange about how money and finance impacts our seas, ocean environments and marine life, and interrogate whether alternative economies and futures of the sea could be imagined. Participating artists and scholars here delve into discourses and themes of sea-land separation, links between global economies, profit, capitalism and extractivism, as well as impacts on seas and ocean environments.
Money, Ruins, and the Sea is dealing with challenging issues in the context of sea exploitation, ocean, and planetary care and health, however, the aim of the project is not to draw a gloomy picture, but instead to engage visitors in critical debates and exchange, questioning and thinking about the wider issues, but most importantly to inspire people to feel they have the power and skills to speak about these challenges and take action.
Notes
- "What is the Blue Economy?" THE WORLD BANK. 6 June 2017. worldbank.org/en/news… -economy
- UNICTAD - United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 18.05.2020
- "The EU blue economy report 2021." Publications Office of the European Union. op.europa.eu/en/publication… -01aa75ed71a1
- Allan Sekula on Fish Story, Camera Austria International 59/60, p.63, 1997
- Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás. Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World. Verso 2021
- idem
- "Our planet is drowning in plastic pollution—it's time for change!." UN Environment Programme. unep.org/interactive… -pollution/.
- Andreas Malm. Fossil Capital, Verso 2016
- Allan Sekula. Fish Story. Richter Verlag, 2003
Credits
Curator: Irini Mirena Papadimitriou
Participating Artists: Ursula Biemann, FRAUD, Kyriaki Goni, Vladan Joler, Nye Thompson, Liam Young, Robertina Šebjanič, Xandra van der Eijk.
Money, Ruins, and the Sea talks and interviews
Hosted by YouTube on
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLg8kx0E5hQm7XgJvy-0BE1JBFgVVtuqr5.
Seminar
In the context of Money, Ruins, and the Sea, and moderated by Irini Mirena Papadimitriou, we were joined by a panel of experts responding to topics explored in the exhibition such as sea exploitation, extractivism, and human impact on our oceans and marine ecologies.
Talks
Ingeborg Reichle, PhD, contemporary art historian and cultural theorist; currently Senior Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany.
Our oceans are in an ecological crisis due to their contamination with millions of tons of toxic microplastic particles. In just a few years, the volume of microplastic particles will exceed that of plankton in our oceans and turn them into a huge Plastisphere. In her contribution, Ingeborg Reichle pointed to a number of artistic responses related to environmental activities, DIY biotechnology, and science, and draw attention to the various attitudes, artists take towards the irreversible destruction of our marine ecosystems due to plastic pollution – like the current threat posed by the loss of marine animal biodiversity.
Xandra van der Eijk, artist and researcher; course leader, MA Ecology Futures, Master Institute of Visual Cultures, St. Joost School of Art & Design, NL.
Taking as starting points her works Seasynthesis and Ghost Reef, Xandra van der Eijk explored the sea’s daily ways of being that go unnoticed by the majority of us due to its vastness and inaccessibility, while creating a case for what contribution artistic exploration of the ocean space can bring to discuss the evolution of the sea and its beings and to fuel policy making.
Ismail Ertürk, Senior Lecturer, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester.
Ismail Ertürk’s presentation focussed on “values of money and value of oceans for socially and environmentally responsible finance.” In our financialised capitalism finance has gained disproportionate power in economy and society. Therefore finance is expected externally and self-organises internally to mobilise its power to impact positively on environmental issues including the oceans and seas that businesses use as free economic resource. Ismail Ertürk will discuss how finance’s values need to change for real impact.
