Aquatopia documents Harmattan Theater’s ecological interventions and traces its engagements with water-bound landscapes, colonial histories, climate change, and public space across New York City, Venice, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Cochin. The volume uses Harmattan’s site-specific performances as a point of departure to consider climate change and rising sea levels as geographical, ecological, and urban phenomena. Instead of a collection of flat, static surfaces, the Aquatopia atlas is animated by a disorienting, anti-mapping strategy, producing a deterritorialized, nomadic, fluid atlas unfolding in real time as an archive of climate change in multidimensional, active space. The book is designed for pedagogical access, with interludes that consolidate the learning outcomes of the experimental theory animating each site-specific performance.
Accompanied by close descriptions of five performances and supplemented by digital documentation available online, this volume intervenes in discussions on climate change, urbanism, and postcolonization/decolonialization, and contributes to interdisciplinary studies of ecology and environmental politics, postcolonial/decolonial theories and practices, performance studies and aesthetics, in particular public art, and performance as research.
Prologues
Climate Precarity and Performance
May Joseph
Opening the World: Climate for Real
Sofia Varino
1. Storm as Method: Climate Performatives
May Joseph and Sofia Varino
Interlude: Aquatopia (2017)
2. Multidirectional Thalassology: Comparative Lagoon Ecologies
May Joseph and Sofia Varino
Interlude: Acqua Alta (2014)
3. Harmattan Theater as Oceanic Praxis: Why Water Matters to Performance
May Joseph
Interlude: Far Rockaway (2013)
4. Terrestrial Becomings: Walking for Climate
Sofia Varino
Interlude: Mar Português (2012)
5. Anthropogenic Citizens, Environmental Agents
May Joseph
Interlude: Sea Dike (2014)
6. Queering Climate: Ecologies of Historical Radiance
Sofia Varino
Epilogues
Harmattan Wind: Climate Change Aesthetics and the Nonhuman
May Joseph
Toward a Somatic Ecology: Harmattan Performs
Sofia Varino
Biography
May Joseph is Founder of Harmattan Theater, Professor of Social Science at the Pratt Institute, and author of the ghosts of lumumba; Sealog: Indian Ocean to New York; Fluid New York: Cosmopolitan Urbanism and the Green Imagination; and Nomadic Identities: The Performance of Citizenship. Joseph is co-editor of Terra Aqua: The Amphibious Lifeworlds of Coastal and Maritime South Asia and of Performing Hybridity. She co-edits three book series from Routledge: Critical Climate Studies, Ocean and Island Studies, and Kaleidoscope: Ethnography, Art, Architecture and Archaeology. Joseph creates site-specific performances along Dutch and Portugese maritime routes exploring climate issues. Visit www.mayjoseph.com.
Sofia Varino is a writer and public scholar whose work focuses on radical thought and practice, cutting across political ecology, history and philosophy of science, and transdisciplinary gender studies. They have published in journals like Whatever, SHIMA, European Journal of Women’s Studies, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, and co-edited a special issue of Somatechnics on data and gender in the life sciences. Varino is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the minor cosmopolitanisms research training group, a cooperation established among the University of Potsdam, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Freie Universität Berlin in Germany. Visit sofiavarino.com.
"What can performance do in the face of anthropogenic climate change? May Joseph and Sofia Varino’s Aquatopia: Climate Interventions offers us a new way of thinking, feeling, and acting around this question through what they call an oceanic practice. The book draws in equal measure on lived experiences from Harmattan’s performances and on theoretical reflections that inform the choice of the performance site and the acts of mapping and moving through this space. This rich and inspiring book refuses to split body and mind, exploring instead how environmental performances can bring about both necessary historical revisions and better futures." - Martina Koegeler, Lund University
"Aquatopia: Climate Interventions by May Joseph and Sofia Varino offers a groundbreaking perspective on the power of performance to address the urgent climate crisis. The prologue sets the stage by emphasizing the ethical imperative to engage with the environment as we face climate precarity.
The authors' journey began with their response to the 2004 tsunami's devastation, leading them to explore performance as a means of ecological engagement. They argue that performance is not just artistic expression but a methodological, political, and ethical intervention in the Anthropocene, the era marked by human impact on the planet.
The book introduces the concept of 'oceanic practice', encouraging readers to forge a new relationship with the environment. Performance emerges as a powerful tool for education, awareness building, and activism in the face of environmental degradation.
In a world marked by pandemics and uprisings, Aquatopia inspires us to reevaluate the role of art and performance in addressing climate change. It invites readers to embrace the transformative potential of performance for a sustainable future.
In summary, Aquatopia is a beacon of hope that challenges us to reimagine the possibilities of performance and art in our climate-aware world."
Lisa Bloom, author of Climate Change and the New Polar Aesthetics: Artists Reimagine the Arctic and Antarctic (2022)
