Littoral Epistemologies: TransAtlantic Encounters and Intertidal Practices of Planetary Care

CoastARTS Spain features three interconnected strands of multimodal research on performance art, each working with the concept of the ‘littoral’ as a zone of planetary encounter where entanglements between colonial histories and environmental crises materialise. Our case studies engage with the coasts of the Atlantic Ocean, its adjacent seas (the Cantabrian, the Mediterranean, the Caribbean) and the world-making process that connect them.

Strand one investigates artistic engagements with shorelines in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica, foregrounding ecological justice at the core of climate and related coastal crises; strand two focuses on the entangled history of plastics pollution and migrant labour extractivism along the Andalucian coast, developing a practice-led walking performance as heritage-maker; strand three connects coastal imaginaries and histories of migration and settlement across Scotland, Nova Scotia and Asturias.

We explore sediments, organisms and objects washed ashore in these regions, using a mix of practice-led and archival research together with contemporary cultural readings of performances and multimedia installations that mobilise Black, Indigenous and feminist knowledges. In each case, our work foregrounds epistemological approaches to ecocultural crisis by weaving together Latin American and Caribbean decolonial thought, transnational Indigenous and Black eco-feminist concepts and postcolonial planetary humanities.

As guiding research questions, this project asks: ‘What stories do the multispecies residues brought ashore and made sensible at the intertidal zones tell?’ ‘What kind of planetary knowledges about our current crises do they enable in the hands of performers at the frontline of struggles for just responses to environmental change?