SEA MATTERS is a performance research pedagogy laboratory based on shared transatlantic storytelling, artistic actions and listening practices between Østfold University College and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Aims include fostering student-led research on artistic and pedagogical proposals across borders where ecology, social justice and performance are connected. Topics are informed by these two nations deeply impacted by complex transatlantic histories. Fredrikstad and Rio de Janeiro as sites, raise questions about settler presence on indigenous lands, the slave trade that marks the Atlantic shorelines and its current ecological crises. From 2023 to 2026, the project includes: dialogue, art projects, sharing, artistic actions, workshops, speculative new curriculum design, residencies and an online archive of works, all sharing the topics of “sea matters”.
Through these practices, students will share and propose new critical learning methods to
be handed to the next generations through online archives and radical bibliographies. The collaborative creation of a digital archive, where the pedagogical and artistic actions will
be available for the partner institutions and the public in general, is a key element of SEA MATTERS. The project is also focused in rooting the research locally. Each institution will
be working closely with local communities: in Rio, we will be joined by MUDA and Casa de Candomblé Ylê Asè Egi Omim and in Fredrikstad, by the Østfold International Theatre. Artists, researchers and citizens outside the immediate frame of the project will be part of the dialogue at various phases. SEA MATTERS shares stories of human and other-than-human co-habitation and develops archives which include local voices’ feedback to our programs.
Project period 01/2023 - 12/2026