Starting on 8 November 2020 anywhere in the world at any time. Check our website https://artport-project.org for updates
WE ARE OCEANÂ Water Walk: A global collaborative initiative to re-focus on the importance of water, rivers and ocean, an invitation for public participation.
We are water, rivers, ocean. And these bodies of water are depending on our behavior whether they are healthy or not. And we as humanity are depending on them. Clean rivers, lakes and other bodies of water mean a health ocean. A healthy ocean means healthy humans.
The WE ARE OCEAN – Water Walk wants to gather people from all over the globe to jointly walk towards rivers, lakes, seas, the ocean or even at home (confined due to a global pandemic) around a creatively staged body of water. We want to look at the beauty of water worldwide, what it means for us and what is at stake. We aim at creating a positive, global and collective moment of reflection towards healthy waters, rivers, ocean.
We invite everybody, every generation, every profession, every country, every gender to take a walk for some minutes, several hours, or even days to reflect about the meaning and value of healthy water. It can be a walk of meditation, of poetry, of music, of silence, of workout.
The WE ARE OCEAN – Water Walk is created by several Green Art Lab Alliance Partners (ArteSumaPaz, ARTPORT_making waves, Ayer Ayer, Imago Bubo, Invisible Flock and Knockvologan Studies) to raise awareness about the importance of healthy waters, rivers and ocean and to make clear that even though the COP26 (UN Climate Conference), which was supposed to start on the 9th of November 2020 in Glasgow, has been postponed to November 2021, we cannot really afford to postpone taking action.
On the day before the Climate Conference would have commenced, we shall start this walk as a reminder, as a community activity gathering people from all over the world without knowing each other. From all over the world we will walk in the direction of Glasgow where the Conference will take place. You are invited to join us in taking action.
We chose Sunday, 08th of November to invite you from all around the planet, to join us on this walk. You can choose the hour and the duration of your walk, it can be minutes, hours or days.
This is the first walk of many which we will undertake until COP26 in 2021 and further. We want to create a civil movement accompanying the UN Decade for Ocean Science and Sustainable Development (2021-2030).
Come on board as individuals, groups of friends, colleagues, families, organisations, neighbors, couples. You can just walk or create a sociable event out of it. The most important idea is that you reflect upon how beautiful water is, how important for life on planet it is, and how much more we should respect, cherish and protect it.
Here are some ideas to help you take action:
1. Turn your phone or camera to the landscape positionÂ
2. Press to record as you walk toward a body of water.
3. IMPORTANT: We would like everything to be captured in a single video so do a continuous recording.
Some suggestions of point-of-views (POV):
a. You can point your camera down on your feet as you start walking and slowly pan up to show the body of water and its surroundings.
b. Bring your camera close to the water show us the state of the water, its colour, living organisms
c. record the area surrounding the body of water; the banks, shore, pathways, flora and fauna, ocean trash, pollution.
d. you are welcome to talk, sing, dance or simply keep silent through the recording
5. After the recording is done send the video to us with these details:
Your name:
Location of recording:
Country, state/ province/ city, name of local area (eg. Singapore, Punggol, Punggol beach):
Date:
Any other details you would like to share.
6. Send the video of approximately 1 minute to: weareocean.waterwalk@gmail.com
WE ARE OCEAN Water Walk is part of the global program WE ARE OCEAN
WE ARE OCEAN is an interdisciplinary art project curated by Anne-Marie Melster and created by ARTPORT_making waves which gathers artists, students, scientists, policymakers, philanthropists, teachers, and curators in order to raise awareness and engage in dialogue about the environmental condition of the ocean and the role humans play in its current and future state. The project events in Berlin and Brandenburg investigated how we interact with the ocean and how interdependent humans and the ocean are. The overall goal was to raise scientific and political awareness through the arts, particularly among young people, to stimulate behavioural change and social action and help them to act responsibly and become conscientious citizens. Ultimately, WE ARE OCEAN seeks to shift the narrative surrounding the ocean – from that of an ocean for human use and exploitation with infinite resources – to an ocean that offers numerous yet precarious benefits to humankind which is its steward and caretaker.
In 2019 we started in Berlin and Brandenburg, in August 2020 we traveled virtually to Kiel (Germany) as part of the Ocean Summit, in September we were in Marseille (France) as part of Manifesta 13 with artist Marc Johnson, from October on we will be in Vancouver (Canada) (our Vancouver artists T’uy’tanat Cease Wyss and Olivier Salvas will work virtually with Vancouver school students), ifrom November on we will virtually travel WE ARE OCEAN to the Ocean Space in Venice (Italy) (as part of the exhibition of Territorial Agency and our invited artists are Pietro Consolandi and Fabio Cavallari from Barena Bianca) with more stops to follow from 2021 to 2030, since we will support the whole UN Ocean Decade.
WE ARE OCEAN Berlin/Brandenburg, Marseille, Venice and Vancouver are artistic projects officially contributing to the Preparatory Phase of the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development:
Thanks to GALA for connecting this group of collaborators:
