Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club #27 – Tidalectics – Sensing Surroundings

Trying to imagine an oceanic worldview, we became aware of our senses. Or rather, aware of lost senses no longer practiced such as orientations in the oceans or seeing underwater.

To sense this world of waters known to the creatures of the sea we must shed our human perceptions of length and breadth and time and place, and enter vicariously into a universe of all-pervading water. For to the sea’s children nothing is so important as the fluidity of their world. It is water that they breathe; water that brings them food; water through which they see, by filtered sunshine from which first the red rays, then the greens, and finally the purples have been strained; water through which they sense vibrations equivalent to sound.“ Rachel Carson, Undersea, 1

In ‘Between Us and Nature – A Reading Club’ we read texts together related to natural sciences, art, anthropology, postcolonialism, and (post)anthropocene, chosen from a female perspective looking beyond disciplines. At this reading group we will read passages together out loud and share our experiences and thoughts about the nature we live in, what it means to us, and will discuss different ways of engaging with the world we inhabit.

Hosts:​ Eva-Fiore Kovacovsky, artist, and Sina Ribak, researcher for ecologies and the arts

1 Rachel Carson, Undersea, IN: Stefanie Hessler (ed.): Tidalectics – Imagining an oceanic worldview through art and science, TBA21-Academy, London, England, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2018.