5. Images and imaginaries of the sea

Chairs: Enrico Squarcina, Erica Neri, Stefania Benetti, Giovanni Modaffari (University of Milano-Bicocca)

Type: hybrid

This session aims to collect contributions that reflect on the role of the arts and visual tools in constructing and transmitting the image of the sea and the relationship between human beings and marine spaces. As a matter of fact, Predrag Matvejevic affirms we do not discover the sea by ourselves and we do not only look at it with our eyes. We also see it as others have looked at it, in the images and stories they have left us: we come to know it and recognise it at the same time (2006). Painting, cinema, photography, cartoons, illustrations from the popular press, cartographies, street art, satirical comics, textbooks, documentaries, TV series, music video clips, all contribute to the geopolitical, environmental, and imaginary construction of our idea of the sea. In an era dominated by the visual and characterized by the hegemony of social media, these materials are of particular interest, creating different seascapes that can assume both positive and negative connotations.

Keywords: seascape, visual geography, ecocriticism, popular geopolitics, critical didactics


Parallel sessions

6th June, Room U6-1e
S5-1 14:00-15:30 (hybrid)
Environment and activism (Chairs: Stefania Benetti, University of Piemonte Orientale and Giovanni Modaffari, University of Milano-Bicocca)

Letícia Parente Ribeiro and Thomaz Menezes Leite, The wild ocean comes crashing down in Rio de Janeiro: Picturing a metropolis by-the-sea at the dawn of the twentieth century
Giovanni Modaffari, The scars of industrialization along the post-war Italian coastline: postcards from the Gulfs of Cagliari and Trieste
Pietro Agnoletto, Italian seascapes through the tourist’s gaze. Liguria’s touristic imaginaries during the economic boom
Sarah Ahmad, Seafaring with the Saint: An Ethnogeographical Study of Fisherfolks in Nagore Shrine, Tamil Nadu, India
Antje Scharenberg, Alternative media at sea: on the role of media technologies in ocean activism
Stefania Benetti, “Life in plastic, it’s fantastic”…?


6th June, Room U6-1e
S5-2 15:45-17:15 (hybrid)
Artistic languages and educational-didactic tools (Chairs: Erica Neri and Enrico Squarcina, University of Milano-Bicocca)

Tamami Fukuda, Examination of the Representation of Northern Natural Landscape in Hokkaido through Hanyu Hikaru’s Seashore Landscape paintings
Erica Neri and Enrico Squarcina, The sea on the body
Laurence Le Dû, Les paysages sous-marins : un imaginaire en construction
Serena Lucrezi, Are young marine scientists ready to tap the potential of the arts and visual tools for dissemination? Reflections from a Master’s course at an Italian University
Maya Vinai and S.M. MithunaSpice Wars, Explorers and Pirates in the Indian Ocean as represented in Comic Books for Children
Lorena Rocca, Silvia Stocco and Manlio Piva, Place-Based Education approach to image and shape images of our ocean