Wet Data: The Ocean and its Negative Archive
type: CreativeWork
description: This paper and the poetry cycle (Wet Data) it describes are in dialogue with a wide array of social and cultural histories of the sea; the production of the sea as a social, economic, and militarized space; maritime ethnographies; as well as artistic and literary projects stemming out of what are now being termed offshore art and forensic literature. The ocean is a contested territory that plays a profound and often under-examined role in defining geopolitics and nationalism under globalism. In eco-critical and creative art contexts, the sea is often represented as a metaphor for loss, the outside, and the unknown; the sea-voyage is frequently deployed a metaphor for the journey of life and the boat as a site of transgression. Through poetic, archival, and forensic practices, artists and writers turn their gaze toward the sea, giving order to its “negative archives.” Which practitioners are breaking into and finding means to represent, communicate, and learn from this “unknown” in the face of increasing global inequity and the climate crisis, and how efficacious are the methodologies they employ?
abstract: This paper and the poetry cycle (Wet Data) it describes are in dialogue with a wide array of social and cultural histories of the sea; the production of the sea as a social, economic, and militarized space; maritime ethnographies; as well as artistic and literary projects stemming out of what are now being termed offshore art and forensic literature. The ocean is a contested territory that plays a profound and often under-examined role in defining geopolitics and nationalism under globalism. In eco-critical and creative art contexts, the sea is often represented as a metaphor for loss, the outside, and the unknown; the sea-voyage is frequently deployed a metaphor for the journey of life and the boat as a site of transgression. Through poetic, archival, and forensic practices, artists and writers turn their gaze toward the sea, giving order to its “negative archives.” Which practitioners are breaking into and finding means to represent, communicate, and learn from this “unknown” in the face of increasing global inequity and the climate crisis, and how efficacious are the methodologies they employ?
author: Sullivan, Kendra M
keywords: Fine Arts, Modern Literature, Oceanic, Offshore Art, Waterborn Art, Poetry, Sea
date published: 2016-09-30T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:58:57Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York