Aesthetics of the Ocean
• What aesthetic strategies do writers/art practitioners deploy to foreground the ocean?
• To what extent can new literatures draw attention to, and re(story) the ocean and kinship in the era of the Anthropocene?
• How is climate change shaping the representations and imagining of the ocean?
Sample Solution
Current ocean management approaches are often characterized by economic or environmental objectives, paying limited consideration to social and cultural dimensions, as well as Indigenous and local knowledge. These approaches tend to inhibit ocean stewardship, often marginalizing coastal communities or limiting people’s access to spiritual, traditional and recreational uses of the ocean and coast. Piloting arts-based participatory research methods to co-create knowledge with co-researchers in Algoa Bay, South Africa finds that these methods can be useful in highlighting cultural connections to the ocean, and remembering and imagining, or reimagining, ways in which people relate to and care for the ocean and coast. For example, using photography and in situ storytelling often allows people to convey memories and histories of more accessible coastlines, or envisaging a future with more inclusive and participatory ocean management.
