Environmental Identities at the Ocean Floor

Bruno Alves de Almeida & Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano

Environmental Identities at the Ocean Floor is a research project that explores the forms of life and the flows of energy that thrive deep down in the ocean floor and their influence on the way we construct our social and environmental identities on the planet’s terrestrial surface. Inspired by multiple theorists and scientists, the project presents two intersecting accounts on the relationship between the ocean, the social and the biological construction of space, undersea mining, digital technology, and the possibility of interspecies communication. the dialogue between both accounts ask: What kind of environmental identities emerge from our hyper-digitized apprehension of the world and its tecno-ecological relation to the ocean floor? This question is unpacked through interdisciplinary research that takes as a starting point a set of scientific studies around Eurythenes Plasticus, a small crustacean found by marine scientists at the deepest region of the Mariana Trench and whose name originates from a plastic microfiber found in its stomach.

Bruno Alves de Almeida (b. 1987, Brazil/ Portugal) is a curator and architect. He is a Fellow at De Appel’s Curatorial Programme, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2018/19).  Almeida is the founder and curator of the research/exhibition platforms ‘SITU’ (2015-2017) and ‘1:1’ (2018-ongoing), both in São Paulo, Brazil. In the project SITU he commissions site-specific works for the external public spaces of Galeria Leme, a building designed by the renowned architect Paulo Mendes da Rocha. In the project 1:1 Almeida commissions a series of bipartite works/exhibitions that simultaneously take place in an exhibition space inside Galeria Jaqueline Martins, and in a pre-existing location within the gallery’s neighbourhood. This second site is chosen by each artist and already hosts its own daily functions.  Almeida has developed projects with institutions such as: Harvard Graduate School of Design, Cambridge, USA; Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, USA; Pivô Art and Research, São Paulo, Brazil, among others. He participated in residencies such as: TATE Intensive, TATE Modern, London, UK (2018); Ideas City Arles, New Museum, New York, USA with LUMA Foundation, Arles, France (2017); Curatorial Intensive Accra, Independent Curators International, New York, USA (2017); IMPACT17, PACT Zollverein, Essen, Germany (2017), among others. His research and projects were published in: ARTFORUM Magazine, USA; ATLÁNTICA Journal of Art and Thought, CAAM - Atlantic Centre of Modern Art, Spain; PRŌTOCOLLUM: Global Perspectives on Visual Vocabulary, Germany, among others.

Juan Pablo Pacheco Bejarano (Bogotá, 1991) is a visual artist and writer whose work is concerned with the role played by different technologies in how we understand, construct, and relate to the world. Through texts, videos, and web projects his research investigates the material and poetic relations between technology and ecology, the territorial dimensions of infrastructures, and the entanglements between water and the internet. He has also produced transdisciplinary laboratories through collaborative work, fostering critical appropriations and experimentations with diverse technologies.