Hydro-art in Poland from the Perspective of the Blue Humanities as a Life Raft in the Face of Ecological Catastrophe Cover Image

Hydro-sztuka w Polsce z perspektywy błękitnej humanistyki jako tratwy ratunkowej wobec katastrofy ekologicznej
Hydro-art in Poland from the Perspective of the Blue Humanities as a Life Raft in the Face of Ecological Catastrophe

Author(s): Ewelina Jarosz
Subject(s): Anthropology, Fine Arts / Performing Arts, Sociology of Culture, Sociology of Art
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: blue humanities; hydro-art; hydrofeminism; blue media; hydro-ecotopy; digital blue archeology; global water crisis; ecosexuality

Summary/Abstract: The aim of my article is to analyze the contemporary diversified notion of practices in the field of visual arts, performative arts, and artivism as related to the care of the aquatic ecosystems. I also intend to introduce the hydro-art in Poland as the category of the blue humanities – relatively recent branch of the new humanities, conceptualized in the Western academies and still little know in the Polish context of Central-Eastern Europe. I apply the navigating tools offered by the blue humanities are to argue for a visually non-obvious and discoursively experimental narrative, sensitive to the areas of ignorance and embarrassing truths hidden behind colors. The following examples of artistic or artivist projects form Poland are included to broaden the narrative of the blue humanities: Ewa Ciepielewska’s artistic and ethnographic drift on the Vistula River, the artistic residency FLOW/Przepływ; the hydrofeminist collectives such as Cecylia Malik and Sister Rives, and Bojka Diving Collective, the paintings of hydro-ecotopia by Małgorzata Wielek, and Justyna Górowska’s WetMeWild. The article also announces the transnational cooperation – the hydrofeminist artistic research project, Anti-Monument to a Shrimp, which I intend to implement together with Górowska, and the American ecosexual artists, Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens.

  • Issue Year: 48/2021
  • Issue No: 2
  • Page Range: 284-318
  • Page Count: 35
  • Language: Polish