Workshop from July 2 to 3, 2025 in Kassel
The CELA 2025 conference focuses on the concept of the oceanic as “thinking with water” to explore counter-currents in hegemonic systems and ideologies, and discussing notions of liquefaction and fluidity as metaphors and allegories. The gathering addresses petrified economic and political models such as colonialism and extractivism, and the counter-currents that take on aesthetic forms of care. The discourse of globalization implements a “hydraulic order” in which flows are framed as universal developments while ignoring the counter-currents and frictions of this “liquid modernity” (Bauman 2000), just as it disregards environmental harm.
The conference seeks to juxtapose critical epistemological perspectives and aesthetic approaches on care, fabulated and formulated by arts, literature as social praxis, and other cultural practices, in a productive way that unveils aquatic relationships and dismantles notions of petrified aesthetic forms, thereby creating new common spaces. With the intention of fostering sustainable relationships and immersing ourselves in aquatic ecologies, we aim to enable, identify, and imagine practices of “thinking with care” (Puig de la Bellacasa 2012). “Thinking with water” allows us to surface the contested territories of extractivism and the hegemonic developmentalist currents along with their economic implications. At the same time, we propose reflecting on new fluid dynamics beyond a world of exploitation.
The workshop aims to initiate a discussion from the perspective of ecological humanities and critical reflection to rehearse collaborative relations with the oceanic, including more-than-human beings, beyond the instrumentalization of water: the oceanic not only as an abstract concept and a metaphor, but as a praxis recognizing that “waters are carefully placed or embodied in specific materialities and spacetimes” (Chen 2013).With the perspective of the oceanic, the conference wants to initiate a search for a common vocabulary to recognize aquatic ecologies as eco-social spaces relevant for a transformation beyond an extractivist model.
Information on the program and venues here.