While sailors use such navigation technology that provides a sense of control and security, the considerably more vulnerable swimmers rely on their own bodies and ocean currents. Their diΩerent relationships with the sea are reflected in diΩerent scales, in diΩerent distances they can perceive and/or traverse, as well as in their specific exposure to a hostile environment. Starting from these two figures, the 26th edition of the Media Mediterranea Festival outlines fragments of a network that juxtaposes them to the degraded marine environment.
The sea navigation mirrors our everyday navigation through networks which is enabled by contemporary technologies. The figure of the sailor inevitably leads to merging of digital and maritime immensities, providing thus insights into the complex relationship between digital technologies and the sea. Whether it be about modern surveillance and measurement technologies and their material consequences, such as derelict underwater cables and digital waste in general, or about the automation and mechanization of global overseas supply chains, the study of technological infrastructure reveals intricate social, economic, political, and ecological relationships.
On the other hand, the figure of the swimmer is far from innocuous as it embodies numerous contradictions, especially when viewed in the context of the Mediterranean which the curator and writer Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung calls the most treacherous graveyard of modern times. Thus, the swimmer’s position in the sea, which occupies a central place in the philosophy of the ocean, due to its location between Europe, Asia, and Africa, is exceedingly disproportionate. For people in motion, the sea is a reminder of the boundaries of their freedom, while for carefree bathers it represents a place of peace and relaxation. Amid the Mediterranean, a struggle for life unfolds, while along its shores mass tourism transforms the coastline, driven by market economy, economic exploitation of public space, and generic design that contradicts and denies the existing local qualities.
However, sailors and swimmers are not the only uninvited guests. The currents of the global economy permeate the world’s seas and oceans, along with vast quantities of waste whose consequences for biodiversity are unfathomable. Describing the state of the marine territory, the artist Julieta Aranda and the anthropologist Eben Kirksey state as follows: “Our oceans are full of double death. The seas are flooded with fungicides, insecticides, and broad-spectrum biocides, all developed for commercial agricultural production. These poisons are dispersed in plumes, far beyond their intended targets. Oil by-products, paints, solvents, adhesives, battery acid, and binding agents accumulate in landfills, leaching into watercourses. Industrial chemicals react with each other, transcending their original state. Plastic floating in the Pacific gyre triggers this double death as birds, marine mammals, turtles, and fish attempt to consume it.”
The networked sea is the sea entrapped in the web of economic, political, social, technological, and ecological factors. Its cartographies are yet to be drawn to alter the modernist colonial vision of the Mediterranean. It is for that reason that this festival edition aims to pinpoint the neuralgic points to provoke reflection on a diΩerent kind of solidarity, such as Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung writes about: “To be in solidarity means to prioritize life over death; it is the refusal of allowing the few to decide on behalf of all the others on how they will die. To be in solidarity means to create structures, networks, and fertile grounds where love is true, and happiness has to be possible. To be in solidarity means to ensure that species condemned to a hundred years of solitude immediately and long-lastingly have the deserved chance on Earth.”
When we talk about the marine environment, solidarity should be considered within a broader context such that includes alliances with the more-than-human world and new technologies. Passive acquiescence to surveillance and control technologies needs to be replaced by the active use of sustainable and open (infra)structures and networks to transform our relationship with the common good, be it technology or the sea. Instead of a threatened and degraded environment reflecting uneven power relations, the emerging marine world calls for a post-humanist philosophy where humans are not outside but are part of the planetary narrative instead.