What is submerged lingers below the surface, is in the murk and the dim, barely visible and elusive. Macarena Gómez-Barris (2017) introduced the term “submerged modes” to describe complex and resistant forms of life and knowledge. These exist in specific material and media environments; sites of digital-capitalist oppression as well as industrial and neocolonialist exploitation, while also resisting these powers. Through their intangible density and illegible heterogeneity, these perspectives elude an “extractive view” from above, that is, approaches that aim at totalizing representation, disciplining, and capitalist valorization. Instead, they invite engagement with methods and perspectives that are equally submerged.
Seeking to open and expand the rich repertoire of meanings of Gómez-Barris’s concept—and focusing on its generative potential by slightly altering its terminology—the artistic and scholarly contributions of the workshop probe the transformative potentials of operating and perceiving from below, especially in times of political and ecological crisis: Can submerging be turned into an aesthetic strategy? What role do imaging media and technologies play in the visualization of the submerged? To what extent are forms of representation or supposedly evident spatial, temporal, and historical orders called into question? How does it relate to the underground in its many geological-material and symbolic meanings? And what happens if we take seriously the processes of gathering and evolving inherent in the term submerging? In other words: What emerges in submersion?

Die Vorträge werden auf Englisch gehalten.

Anmeldung: medienwissenschaftuol.de
Konzept und Organisation: Marie Sophie Beckmann & Petra Löffler
Unter Mitarbeit von: Jakob Claus

Donnerstag, 25. Mai

15:00 - 15:30
WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
Marie Sophie Beckmann & Petra Löffler (Oldenburg)

15:45 - 16:45
FORUM: QUEER GEO-TECHNO-CHEMISTRIES
Helen Pritchard (Basel): "Love Theories for Submergent Queer Geo-Techno-Chemistries"

16:45 - 17:15
Coffee Break

17:15 - 18:15
FORUM: DECOLONIZING GEOENGINEERING
Patrizia Costantin (Espoo): "Resilient Terra"

Freitag, 26. Mai

09:30 - 11:30
PANEL: SUBMERGED ARCHIVES I
Andrea Liu (Berlin/New York): "Commemorating Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa: Reparative Archiving from Below"
Maryse Ouellet (Bonn): "How to Care for the Submerged Memory of the Camps? Perspectives from Esther Shalev-Gerz and Andrea Büttner’s Installation Works"
Özge Çelikaslan-Teuscher & Pınar Asan (Braunschweig/ Münster): "The Thresholds of Sub(e)merging: Contemporary Art and Archive in Turkey"

11:45 - 13:15
PANEL: SUBMERGED ARCHIVES II
Johanna Laub (Frankfurt): "Sedimented Debris: Unearthing the Precarious Archive of Guinea- Bissau's Militant Cinema in 'Luta Ca Caba Inda'"
Hannah Schmedes (Bochum): "Revenant Infrastructures: Bog Bodies, Archive"

Lunch Break
13:15 - 14:30

14:30 - 16:00
PANEL: LOSING GROUND
Hauke Ohls (Bonn) "Submerged Perspectives Through the View from Above in Contemporary Art"
Martin Siegler (Weimar): "Sinkholes, or: The Abyss of Media"

Coffee Break
16:00 - 16:30

16:30 - 17:30
FORUM: WETLAND ONTOLOGIES
Nomeda & Gediminas Urbonas (Vilnius/Boston): "Amphibian Pedagogy and Wet Ontologies of the Swamp"
17:45 - 18:45
LECTURE PERFORMANCE: SUBMERGED HISTORIES
Suza Husse (Berlin) & Verena Melgarejo Weinandt (Vienna): "she creates nightmares. troubling colonial phantasies (revenge ~ avatars and manyness*)"

Samstag, 27. Mai

09:30 - 10:30
FORUM: LIQUID ONTOLOGIES
Liliana Gómez (Kassel): "Liquid Ontologies and Water as Media-Reflexive Dimension in Contemporary Art"

10:45 - 12:15
PANEL: AESTHETICS OF SUBMERGING
Friederike Nastold (Oldenburg): "Some Kind of Bodies – Some Kind of Natures: Affective- Performative Aesthetics of Submergence in Tejal Shah's and Gauri Gill's Work"
Amelie Wedel (Bochum): "Beetles, Algae, Litter: Cinematic Multi-Species Co-Production in 'Geographies of Solitude'"

12:15 - 13:15
Lunch Break

13:15 - 14:00
CLOSING DISCUSSION
Moderated by Jakob Claus