INSURGENT SEABED ARCHIVE: CURATING SEABED MEMORIES
How particular knowledge about the environment becomes standard (or, whose stories are told, and how) is an animating question of my work.
How is the ocean remembered? What is saved that recalls those memories? What might it mean to make not only more, but better, archives of ocean history? And how, with those diverse archives, might we develop better accounts of the ocean that speak to social and environmental change in its situated manifestations?
Not only is it true that what gets stored and storied is political, but on top of this, archival access can be political and is often simply expensive. In response, I am collaboratively assembling an Insurgent Seabed Archive that begins from the conviction that more just, representative ocean governance requires more, and different, stories.
The INSURGENT SEABED ARCHIVE, an effort supported by the NTU CCA’s Climate Crisis & Cultural Loss project, collects and curates memories of the seabed, where both ‘memories’ and ‘seabed’ are meant in their broadest possible senses.
Structured as an iterative call-and-response, the INSURGENT SEABED ARCHIVE presents multiple sides of the story of ocean histories: the dominant narrative proffered by the Nii Allotey Odunton Museum of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, alongside dispersed and plural counter-narratives by interlocutors, both human and more-than-human, whose lives have gravitated toward the oceanic and the benthic.
These stories have been reassembled into an alternative seabed archive that questions how particular knowledges and frames of apprehension about the seabed environment became standard, and how we might develop accounts of the ocean that speak directly to social and environmental change in its situated manifestations.
How is the ocean remembered? What is saved that recalls those memories? What might it mean to make not only more, but better, archives of ocean history? And how, with those diverse archives, might we develop better accounts of the ocean that speak to social and environmental change in its situated manifestations?
Not only is it true that what gets stored and storied is political, but on top of this, archival access can be political and is often simply expensive. In response, I am collaboratively assembling an Insurgent Seabed Archive that begins from the conviction that more just, representative ocean governance requires more, and different, stories.
The INSURGENT SEABED ARCHIVE, an effort supported by the NTU CCA’s Climate Crisis & Cultural Loss project, collects and curates memories of the seabed, where both ‘memories’ and ‘seabed’ are meant in their broadest possible senses.
Structured as an iterative call-and-response, the INSURGENT SEABED ARCHIVE presents multiple sides of the story of ocean histories: the dominant narrative proffered by the Nii Allotey Odunton Museum of the International Seabed Authority in Kingston, Jamaica, alongside dispersed and plural counter-narratives by interlocutors, both human and more-than-human, whose lives have gravitated toward the oceanic and the benthic.
These stories have been reassembled into an alternative seabed archive that questions how particular knowledges and frames of apprehension about the seabed environment became standard, and how we might develop accounts of the ocean that speak directly to social and environmental change in its situated manifestations.
Deep-sea Deposits. Chart 1,
Sir John Murray and Alphonse François Renard, Report
on Deep-Sea Deposits Based on the Specimens Collected During the Voyage of
H.M.S. Challenger in the Years 1872 to 1876 (H.M. Stationery Office, 1891).
The Insurgent Seabed Archive’s first appearance in the world is at Ocean Space, Venice (March 23, 2024 - November 11, 2024). Contributions appear from Rachel Reeves, Amelia Hine, Charity Edwards, Jason Crow, Sonya Schoenberger, Tirza Meyer, Mats Ingulstad, Helen Rozwadowski, Katherine Sammler, Charne Lavery, Laurence Publicover, Tamsin Badcoe, Stefan Helmreich, Joe Riley, Jonathan Galka, Jess Auerbach, and Giulia Champion.
The Insurgent Seabed Archive’s second appearance in the world is at the Nanyang Technological University’s Art, Design, & Media Gallery, Singapore (April 12, 2024 - May 31, 2024 2024). Contributions appear from Rachel Reeves, Sonya Schoenberger, Samantha Muka, Tirza Meyer, Helen Rozwadowski, Katherine Sammler, Charne Lavery, Laurence Publicover, Tamsin Badcoe, Stefan Helmreich, Jimmy Packham, Joe Riley, Jonathan Galka, Jess Auerbach, and Giulia Champion.
Unattributed drawing of an unnamed woman. UELH, HMS Challenger Papers.
The archive will grow and appear elsewhere in time, both in physical and digital form. If you’d like learn about how to contribute a submission, please get in touch.
︎ jgalka@g.harvard.edu
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Sketch near Suva, Fiji, with writing by Fijian girl. Artist: J. J. Wild. UELH, HMS Challenger Papers. Gen. 30, no. 2.
︎ jgalka@g.harvard.edu
Sketch near Suva, Fiji, with writing by Fijian girl. Artist: J. J. Wild. UELH, HMS Challenger Papers. Gen. 30, no. 2.