Ca chauffe dans les fonds marins
This article by Raf Custers has first been published in Gresea Echos n°118, June 2024, the quarterly magazine of Gresea, Brussels ‘Métaux critiques : quand l’Europe mine sa transition L'année 2024 ne fait que débuter [ce texte a été rédigé en mars 2024], et le secteur de l’exploitation minérale …

The Ocean's Trompe l'Oeil
The performances, conversations and stories of the exhibition Charging Myths - 'In words nourished' at Framer Framed -including The Ocean's Trompe l'Oeil- are compiled in a zine produced in collaboration with the artists, On-Trade-Off and Framer Framed. With contributions by Greet Brauwers, Raf Cus…

Is the fate of our deep sea in the hands of mining companies?
Our first speaker at ASftS#7 was Alanna Smith. She is the director of the environmental organisation Te Ipukarea in the Cook Islands. Last year the Cook Islands signed three Seabed minerals exploration licences. One of the companies involved is the Belgium-based dredging company DEME. As Alanna was…

The gap in our understanding of the deep-sea biodiversity
The second speaker at ASftS#7 was Ann Vanreusel. She is head of the Marine Biology research group at Ghent University. Her expertise lies in marine ecology and biodiversity with a special focus on the meiobenthos. Meiofauna - for those not involved in marine biology- loosely defines a group of orga…

Why do we need a moratorium on deep-sea mining?
Between 2013-19 Sandor Mulsow was head of the Office of Environmental Management and Mineral Resources at ISA. The mission of the ISA is to authorize and control development of mineral related operations in the international seabed considered the common heritage of mankind and also protect the ecos…

The ocean is one large ecosystem
Marine ecologist Sarah Vanden Eede works at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Belgium as the Oceans & Fisheries Policy Officer. She advocates for North Sea nature (network of marine protected areas and efficient marine spatial planning); for sustainable fishing techniques and a moratorium o…

Put money of the industry in an independent research fund
One of the guests at ASftS #7 was Steven Degraer. Marine management, focusing on conservation and sustainable use and exploitation of marine resources, has always been the core focus of the work of Steven Degraer. Since 2008, he is coordinating the Marine Ecology and Management team at the Royal Be…

Poets for the Planet
Autumn 2022 Greet Brauwers and Raf Custers travelled to the Cook Islands in the Pacific for three months. Belgian company GSR has a contract running there to excavate metal nodules from the territorial waters around the archipelago. They were doing fieldwork there, but also wanted to establish a di…

Er is geen grens tussen land en water
Eind 2022 trokken Greet Brauwers en Raf Custers voor drie maanden naar de Cook Islands. Ze wilden er onder andere de verbinding maken met niet-Westerse wereldvisies en registreren hoe de jongere generatie op de eilanden omgaat met de tweespalt economie/ecologie en voor welke lokale en globale alter…

The sea if suffering
We sit with master navigator Peia Patai, next to the double-hull sailing boat (the 'vaka') Motu Okeanos Waa’Qab at Rarotonga's harbour. A vaka is a Maori voyaging canoe. That morning Peia Patai and his crew have lifted the vaka out of the water and brought it into a dry dock where she will be repai…

Follow the birds to catch fish
We meet Nga Takaiti at one of the eateries on Punanga Nui Market in Rarotonga, and a few days later he takes us out fishing. Shortly after 5 a.m. we leave from Avana's fishing harbour on the Southside of the island. Nga's standing up at the wheel in a manhole, we are sitting in the back of the boat…

Meeting Mangaia's ancestors
Walking on Mangaia with Allan Tuara we encounter his ancestors, how their sacred places were destroyed, how their gods were forgotten. Mangaians are stubborn and independent, and maintain that reputation. When for example the Cook Islands Land Court wanted to set foot on this island, it was met wi…

Taramea
A crown-of-thorns sea star, called taramea in Māori, has broken out on the island of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, which could endanger the survival of the surrounding coral reef. Local environmental organisation Kōrero O Te `Ōrau is tackling the outbreak by training young Māori people in deep-sea…

Laboratory for form and matter
In haar installatie ‘L’Origine du Monde’, gerealiseerd in 2020, bracht AnneMarie Maes een artistieke en esthetische visie op het proces dat aan de grondslag ligt van het leven op aarde, nl. fotosynthese door algen en de daarbijhorende productie van zuurstof. Algen vormen de basis van bijna al het l…

Golven ‘vangen’
In Raversijde liet Marjolijn Boterenbrood de zee zelf een oeuvre maken. De golven, de wind en het water deden het werk. Op uitnodiging van Into The Great Wide Open werkte Marjolijn Boterenbrood een jaar vanuit het atelier van de schilder Betsy Akersloot Berg (1850-1922) op Vlieland. Zij tr…

The Law of the Sea
Esther Kokmeijer has put the text of the law of the sea of UNCLOS, more specifically the section on deep sea mining that was added in '94, on a porcelain sheet to indicate that you have to take good care of it. Porcelain is strong but the sheet is so fine that it is also easy to break, which reflec…

Ocean Conversations
During her presentation for ASftS Marialena Marouda introduced the work of the Oceanographies Institute, by talking about its history, it‘s main practices, it‘s collaborators and modes of working. After storytelling, she sang some of TOI‘s Ocean Conversations and Demonstrations with the help of TO…

Underwater Sound North Sea
Stijn Demeulenaere described his search for underwater sound in the North Sea and the confrontation with the increasing noise pollution. He used audio samples and noise maps. Stijn Demeulenaere made underwater sound recordings at the southern and northern borders of the North Sea: first along the…

Thinking becomes Spatial
Theun Karelse demonstrated how you can link stories and characters to features in the landscape, so thinking becomes spatial, a search for a way to let the land and the sea speak for themselves. “Before the emergence of literacy, oral cultures were consolidated without written text, but through a…