Wet Geographies III – Water-worlds: art practices and wet ecologies

Wet Geographies III – Water-worlds: art practices and wet ecologies

Veronica Vickery (University of Exeter) and Philip Steinberg (University of Durham)

This call is for the third of three linked panels that comprise Wet Geographies. Taking place outside of a traditional seminar space, it is designed to accommodate proposals for alternative presentational formats such as performance and other forms of artist presentation.

Proceedings will conclude with a panel discussion that will serve to draw out and reflect on themes emerging from across the ‘Wet Geographies’ discussions.

Wet Geographies I – Under the Sea: Geographies of the deep

Wet Geographies II – Water in the Anthropocene: creative approaches

Water is in many ways an enigma.

Puddle, trickle, stream, river, estuary, sea, ocean

Aquifer, springs, oasis, wells

Ice, water, vapour.

Water. Whilst we depend on it for our survival, it also threatens to drown us. Despite the seas and oceans covering 90% of the earths ‘surface’, these vast tracts of water remain in many ways unfathomable, vast tracts of the ‘unknown’ within our immediate world.

This session – the third in the ‘Wet Geographies’ series – engages creative practice for thinking with water as a space that has depth and volume, that is a stable surface but also a perpetually re-forming element, that both gives and takes away life, that is always inside us (we are 70% water) and is necessary for life but that also poses challenges to human habitation. In joining art practices with the ‘nature’ of water, this session explores a synergy between the two. Art practices have the potential to bring the intensity, dynamism, instability, and rhymicality of the material world to the fore. In its ability to capture the vibratory structure of matter itself, art is particularly well suited for exploring the ontology of water and, through this engagement, opening up our understandings of key land-oriented concepts, such as ‘ground’ and ‘territory’.

We welcome proposals for presentations that will consider the materially processual and eventful nature of water-worlds, and the patterns through which humans live with, under, upon, and through water’s geo-physical circulations and re-formations. This session is specifically designed to accommodate ‘non-traditional’ presentations using alternative formats (e.g. performance lectures, sound work, visual media, etc.) – we expect to work with presenters collaboratively to shape this session. Please get in touch with draft ideas by Friday 23rd January to discuss your ideas and the practicalities involved.

The submission date for finalized abstracts is Monday 2nd February.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to both V.Vickery@exeter.ac.uk and philip.steinberg@durham.ac.uk.

Please note we are able to offer some limited support for fee remission for presenters from disciplines other than geography and who would not qualify for support from an academic institution. Please let us know if you think this might apply to you.