The Aquatic Turn in Afrofuturism

The recent efflorescence of fictional writings and artistic works examined under the rubrics of Blue Humanities (Mentz 2009), Critical Ocean Studies (DeLoughrey 2019), Hydro-Criticism (Winkiel 2019), or New Thalassology (Horden and Purcell 2006), testify a recent cultural shift from the land to the sea. In this article, the hydrosphere is analysed in two female Afrofuturist works – Nnedi Okorafor’s Lagoon (2014) and Wanuri Kahiu’s short film Pumzi (2010) – to address the global capitalist order and to imagine an aquafuturist multispecies aesthetics that springs from the countermemory of the Middle Passage and its undersea myths

The Data Imaginaries of Climate Art: The Manifest Data Project

We discuss a series of artworks produced since 2009 including The Southern Ocean Studies (2012), The Northern Polar Studies (2014) and Carbon Topographies (2020). Through this work we explore how climate models can be employed to develop data driven imaginaries of climate change, its impacts and causes. We argue for the experiential potential of this information for producing differently situated ways of knowing climate, framing this through a methodological approach described as ‘data manifestation’.

Sustaining Ocean Observations: Strategic Messaging and Communications

Arguably the most important outcome of the Sustaining Ocean Observations 2.0 Workshop hosted by the Ocean Studies Board was “Strengthening the Collective Voice: Communicating the Importance of Sustained Ocean Observations.” One of the most significant challenges the ocean observing community faces is articulating the value of ocean information and improving ocean literacy. The Ocean Decade presents a pivotal moment to catalyze new effort and funding that will support strategic and unified messages regarding the role that observations play in society. Led by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL), the proposed strategic messaging and communications initiative will develop consistent, layered, and clear messaging regarding the value of ocean observations. COL will leverage existing interagency programs and trusted partners, along with external academic, policy, and industry collaborators, to obtain funding and other resources to support the initiative. This Ocean-Shot will build on ideas put forth by Ocean Obs’19, the Ocean Best Practices System, and other UN Ocean Decade initiatives. Primary activities will include hiring communications experts, surveying the community and relevant partners to collect input on the role of observations, and identifying messaging gaps. This effort would strengthen the community’s collective voice to demonstrate the value of observations to potential funders, philanthropic or private partners, and governments, and would address the needs of the technology sector.

Ferric iron triggers greenalite formation in simulated Archean seawater

Sedimentary rock deposits provide the best records of (bio)geochemical cycles in the ancient ocean. Studies of these sedimentary archives show that greenalite, an Fe(II) silicate with low levels of Fe(III), was an early chemical precipitate from the Archean ocean. To better understand the formation of greenalite, we explored controls on iron silicate precipitation through experiments in simulated Archean seawater under exclusively ferrous conditions or supplemented with low Fe(III). Our results confirm a pH-driven process promoting the precipitation of iron-rich silicate phases, and they also reveal an important mechanism in which minor concentrations of Fe(III) promote the precipitation of well-ordered greenalite among other phases. This discovery of an Fe(III)-triggering iron silicate formation process suggests that Archean greenalite could represent signals of iron oxidation reactions, potentially mediated by life, in circumneutral ancient seawater.

The Indian Dimension of Aceh and Sumatra History

Indonesia’s maritime boundary with India, lying barely 100km from Banda Aceh, appears quiet and of little interest to policy-makers, in contrast to almost all the other contested boundaries with Malaysia, China, the Philippines, and Australia. India’s historical relations with Sumatra have also drawn less scholarly or popular attention than those with the Arab, Persian, and Turkish worlds, or with Java, the Peninsula, and China. It is one of the imbalances and justifying the “Indian Ocean’ in the title of International Centre for Aceh and Indian Ocean Studies. It is also supported by arguing that northern Sumatra’s most important historical relationship outside Sumatra itself was for long with India. The time must come when this neighbourly maritime relationship is normalised in the context of improving Indonesia-India ties.

Submerged Bodies

Recent scholarship in the blue humanities, or critical ocean studies, has turned to the mutable relationship between human bodies and the ocean, shifting from depictions of a seascape across which human bodies attain agency to considering the experience and representability of sea ontologies, wet matter, and transcorporeal engagements with the more-than-human world. This work generally focuses on a universalized ocean (as nonhuman nature) rather than a geographically and culturally specific place (as history). The authors’ work turns the visual focus from the surface to the depths, engaging with the Caribbean Sea and contemporary artists who depict a gendered oceanic intimacy and aesthetics of diffraction and submergence. Building upon the 2017 exhibition Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago, curated by Tatiana Flores, this article expands the conversation from the archipelagic to the submarine, engaging “tidalectic” representations of underwater bodies through ontologies and aesthetics of diffraction. The authors consider the work of artists Tony Capellán, Jean-Ulrick Désert, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Nadia Huggins, and David Gumbs.