DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition

vincent roumagnac

Data Ocean Theatre (D.O.T.) is a four-year artistic research project that explores the intersection of myths, Western theatre memory, new media, digital animism, climate emergency, sea and ocean transformations, queer subcultures, and technological mutations in relation to aspects of “submersion” as a contemporary living condition. Expanding on the claimed unsustainability of Western theatre’s anthropocentric foundations, D.O.T. examines how the notion and practice of the stage transform amidst climate urgency, technological hypergrowth, and discipline-fluid hybridization. It seeks to generate experiments on a new temporal ecology of the stage, examining how theatre-making infrastructures might transition within a multi-agential dynamic of emergence. D.O.T. appears, disappears, and reappears through a series of polymorphic artworks and research affordances based on the ecodramaturgical consideration of the simultaneous phenomenon of 1. the rising sea and ocean levels, 2. the exponential growth of big data in our informational age, and 3. the emotional overload caused by the latter two happening, projection, and prophecy. D.O.T. explores inherited sea-and-ocean-oriented myths and revisits theatre plays with a marine backdrop, looking simultaneously into contemporary nautical vocabulary and sea imagery used as metaphors for computational realities. D.O.T. proposes to re-mythologise Western theatre foundations by forming an alternative pantheon for a queer, hydrofeminist, and technoanimist reset of the “tragic,” at the interplay between a syncretic marine mythology and the ambiguities of “technology-as-monster” narratives. In D.O.T. project, the forces and fragilities of transforming marine ecosystems intersect with algorithmic-conditioned life and crossbreeding of diverse art disciplines and research fields based on collaborations, generating imaginary prototypes for future societal constructions in the floods. D.O.T. is structured around several key components: the prologue Simultaneous Environments, featuring a series of experimental works; the central project Tragedy and the Goddexxes, which culminates in three public exhibitions; and a series of workshops, residencies, and a final publication in the form of an exposition on the Research Catalogue. This final publication of the DATA OCEAN THEATRE postdoctoral artistic research project (2021–2024) titled 'DATA OCEAN THEATRE (OUT OF THE BLUE); A Discipline-Fluid Postdoctoral Artistic Research Project Exposition' performs on the Research Catalogue as both an aesthetico-epistemic object in its own right and as an a posteriori account, or catalogue raisonné, of the project. It also acts as a supplement to the author's doctoral publication, Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses), completing the latter to form a diptych on the Research Catalogue. Similar to the doctoral publication, the non-linear, non-hierarchical, and non-chronological reading, or hyper-reading, of Data Ocean Theatre (Out of the Blue) invites its visitors to navigate freely and compose their own fluid, archipelagic, and tidal experience to make sense of the project as a whole.

Artography

Note: It is impossible to gather all the artistic projects encountered over the four years of the Data Ocean Theatre process, especially as the seas, oceans, and waters in general have been recently central sites, themes, and matters in contemporary art practices. In addition to flagship projects such as Ocean Space and Territorial Agency/Oceans in Transformation, which serve as major hubs/initiatives on the topic, I have included here a series of recent projects that particularly caught my attention and fostered a dialogue with the specific research

Ader, Bas Jan. In Search of the Miraculous, 1975.

Aitken, Doug. Underwater Pavilions, 2017.

Berrada, Hicham. Présage, 2018.

Bonajo, Melanie. Night Soil Trilogy, 2014-2016.
Charrière, Julian. As We Used to Float, 2018.

Chen, Yi-Fei. Tear gun, 2016.

Crespo, Sofia. This jellyfish doesn't exist, 2021.

Creuzet, Julien. Attila cataracte ta source aux pieds des pitons verts finira dans la grande mer gouffre bleu, 2024.

Floc'h, Nicolas. Deep sea, 2021.

Gaillard, Cyprien. Ocean II Ocean, 2019.

Halprin, Lawrence & Anna. Driftwood City, The Sea Ranch, 1966.

Hameed, Ayesha. Brown Atlantis, 2022.

Holder, Joey. The Cryptid Hunter, 2024.

Huyghe, Pierre. Liminal, 2024.

Jonas, Joan. Moving Off the Land, 2016/2018.

Kantor, Tadeuz. Sea Panoramic Happening, 1967.
Kudsk Steensen, Jakob. Aquaphobia, 2017.

mbl architects. Monuments built by the sea, 2021.
McRae, Lucy. The Institute of Isolation, 2016.

Prouvost, Laure. Vois ce bleu profond te fondre, 2019.

Ramirez, Enrique. Cruzar un muro, 2012.
Rezaire, Tabita. Deep Down Tidal, 2017.

Škarnulytė, Emilija. t ½, 2019

Solomon, Rivers. The Deep, 2019.

Strehler, Giorgio. La Tempesta, 1978.

Treister, Suzanne. HFT The Gardener, 2014-2017.

Vicuña, Cecilia. Kon Kon, 2010.
Vesna, Victoria. Noise Aquarium, 2018.

Wet Dreams. Collective exhibition, cur: Marina Otero Verzier, 2024.

Yeung, Trevor. Courtyard of Attachments, 2024.

Sea-oriented theatre plays:

Beckett, Samuel. Embers, 1957.
Bond, Edward. The Sea, 1973.
Césaire, Aimé. Une Tempête (A Tempest), 1979.
Claudel, Paul. Le soulier de satin (The Satin Sleeper), 1929.
Duras, Marguerite. L’Eden Cinéma, 1977.
Fosse, Jon. A Summer Day, 1999.
Ibsen, Henrik. Fruen fra havet (The Lady from the Sea), 1888.
Marivaux, Pierre de. L’île des esclaves (Slave Island), 1725.
Racine, Jean. Phèdre (Phaedra), 1677.
Shakespeare, William. The Tempest, 1610.
Sophocles. Philoctetes, 409 BC.
Euripides. Iphigenia in Aulis, 405 BC.

-graphies

These -graphies supplements and updates the foundational -graphies of the doctoral project Reacclimating the Stage (Skenomorphoses), adding a specific Data Ocean Theatre focus to the long-term artistic research on re-ecologising theatre. Click here to open the doctoral -graphies in another tab. Then, please return to this window to continue hyper-reading Data Ocean Theatre (Out of the Blue).

Bibliography

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Bushnell, Rebecca. A Companion to Tragedy. Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2015.

Chen, Mel Y. Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Duke University Press, 2015.

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