Liberated Planet Studio

Fluid Bodies, Sea Memory, Aquatic Relations “Something New Will Come From The Water”

Register for Bodies of Water, Learning Endings 3/18/23

Every year, hundreds of whales and other marine mammals strand on terrestrial shores. These ocean-dwelling animals are mostly hidden from humans during their lifetimes, but in a stranding death, they reveal themselves to us, and call on us to care. The scientific practice of necropsy attends these animals in their deaths as a queer way of witnessing their lives, and caring for their kin. An act of deep intimacy and deep implication, necropsy opens the ocean and the animal to the human sensorium. How can we prepare ourselves to meet this vulnerability?

This workshop will attune to the micro-movements of our own bodies of water. Through listening and touch, our organs rearrange, as we contemplate what these animals, in their deaths, also ask of us. Together, we are learning endings.

Please wear comfortable clothing, and bring a phone or MP3 player that can play a sound file from the internet, as well as earphones/earbuds (if you do not have these, please let us know and we will provide them). Please bring anything else that will increase your comfort (e.g. water bottle).

This workshop is offered by Learning Endings, a multi-part interdisciplinary research project led by artist Patty Chang (Los Angeles), cultural researcher and writer Astrida Neimanis (Kelowna, BC) and veterinary pathologist Aleskija Neimanis (Uppsala, Sweden). It examines the work of scientists who perform necropsies of dead marine mammals as unacknowledged forms of attention and care, and explores how various kinds of art practice can support this care work. Including laboratory observation, expert interviews, walking art, filmmaking, community engagement, poetics, public outreach, and the sweaty work of interpersonal and interdisciplinary exchange, Learning Endings seeks different kinds of conversation about science, oceans, and human responsibility. As we try to figure out how to respond to so many untimely endings, how might we reconfigure the role of both science and art as part of the complicated ecologies of mutual care in and for the oceans, and for the beings that call it home?