Whose Ocean? Reading Group second series

Co-hosted by Utrecht University’s Pathways to Sustainability and Casco Art Institute
Biweekly: 27 November, 4 & 8 December 2024, and 22 January 2025 / Casco HQ


The biweekly Whose Ocean? Reading Group resumes after its initial series in the spring. Each session is chaired by a different researcher involved in the project, focusing on a selected term or topic from their respective disciplines.

These sessions contribute to a shared glossary for the upcoming Assembly on 30 January 2025. You can access the harvests and reflections from previous series and other project updates through the Whose Ocean? are.na page.

The sessions are open to everyone. Please send an email to marianna@casco.art to RSVP and receive the reading materials or for other inquiries related to the project.



Session #1 with Magdalena Górska: Extractivism, capitalism, modernity
27 November, 15:00–17:00 / Casco HQ

In the first session led by Magdalena Górzka, we examine how modernity and capitalism accelerated an extractivist approach to the ocean, contributing to its deterioration today. We combine a reading from the humanities (Capitalism and the Sea by Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás) with a report on deep-sea mining from the natural sciences.


Session #2 with Susanne Ferweda: Jellyfish
4 December, 15:00–17:00 / Casco HQ

The second session of the reading group led by Susanne Ferwerda focuses on jellyfish as a case study to challenge human-centered perspectives. Often overlooked due to their ecology and the consequent difficulties in scientific research, jellyfish’s adaptive abilities offer valuable insights into environmental change and invite a post-human reimagining of our relationship with the sea. This session follows Stacy Alaimo’s contribution on this topic from the book Thinking with Water.



Session #3 with Birgit Kaiser: Alternative geographic perspectives, the Black Atlantic, voices
18 December, 15:00–17:00 / Casco HQ

The final reading session of this calendar year is led by Birgit Kaiser, who in earlier sessions guided us in reflecting on alternative geographic perspectives and the Black Atlantic through the texts of Édouard Glissant and Derek Walcott. Continuing these themes, we now turn to Katherine McKittrick’s ‘Geographic Stories’ from Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, a text that examines how geographies shaped by slavery and violence stir resistance and become sites for social and cultural transformation.


Session #4 with Susanne Ferweda: Undrowned
22 January, 15:00–17:00 / Casco HQ

This final session, led by researcher Susanne Ferweda, takes place a few days before the Assembly. We study passages from Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals by Alexis Pauline Gumbs about Black feminist wisdom alongside lessons from marine mammals on survival, connection, and care.

Image description: Whose Ocean? Reading Group Harvest from 27 May 2024 on reparations and the sea by Marika Vandekraats.

This activity is part of:

An assembly that explores how the ocean can be meaningfully represented on international and national platforms, including courts of law and diplomacy

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