Astrida Neimanis, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Feminist Environmental Humanities at the UBC Okanagan, who writes about water, weather, and bodies, presents the relation between breathing and the sea: breathing as a human prosthesis that is inherently divisive; breathlessness as a form of repression, to both marine and human ecologies.

Backst_age Healing the Ocean
TBA21–Academy 10th Anniversary
In collaboration with TBA21–Academy, st_age presents the Backst_age Healing the Ocean program to mark 10 years of TBA21–Academy’s commitment to addressing the need for care, commonality, and literacy towards the Ocean. Through a selection of excerpts from TBA21–Academy’s streams of enquiry, st_age initiates a growing video syllabus which will address the overarching concepts that define its curatorial program and research interests. 

Is the Ocean an art space? A methodological approach? How do we extend care to the more-than-human? Can the notion of commons help us put a theory of care into practice? Our points of departure will be the inextricable entanglement of social and environmental issues, the importance of listening and responding, the role of art as a vessel of change, and the potent implications of understanding the Ocean as both a living entity and an epistemological substance—especially paramount in the current climate of reckless resource exploitation in the deep sea.

Throughout its programming, the Academy reinforces engaging and fostering a deeper understanding of, and relationship with, the watery worlds. Join us as we begin to explore our Ocean curriculum on st_age with an open-ended exercise in thinking, sensing, and Healing with the Ocean.
Access the audio file HERE.