MAREA1 is a photographic research and production project looking to interpret our physical and sensory relationship with the coastal edge by creating a visual archive. MAREA looks to reach broad and transcultural questions such as How are we going to live together with the sea?, and Where will we live once the sea and groundwater level rise?
“Ten percent of the world’s population [770M] lives on the 2 percent of the earth’s land area designated as ‘low-elevation coastal zones (LECZ)’[...]. Almost two-thirds [66%] of world urban settlements with populations greater than 5 million falls in this zone” (McGranahan, Balk, and Anderson, 2017).
Although scientific sea-level rise projections estimated different scenarios, a conservative consensus agreed at least in one metre by the end of the century. This should not be a surprise to anyone, but new scientific evidence demonstrates that places with shallow coastal groundwater table levels might lift in conjunction with sea level (Rotzoll and Fletcher, 2012; Hoover, 2015). Hard static barriers, like sea walls, breakwaters, or levees, can not protect us from this new hazard. This novel component will silently hit us from below, affecting buried urban infrastructures, fresh drinkable groundwater reservoirs, and many other critical urban systems from the built environment
As a research project, it seeks to approach the contemplative and temporal relationship of the sensory experience, in order to then propose an interpretation of our relationship with the sea, as if it were a visual or documentary archive of the coastline. MAREA takes as an example to investigate the coastal edge in Chile mainly for two reasons, firstly, because it is one of the largest coastal edge in the global south and presents itself as interesting starting point with different sort of climates that can relate different countries around the world, and secondly because as strange as it may sound coming from a country with more sea than land, the chilean society has lost the connection with the sea, as Patricio Guzman said “The indigenous people of Patagonia were the first and only maritime people of Chile. We Chileans today have lost that intimacy with the sea”. 2
To what extent could this absence referred to Patricio Guzmán be affecting us as a society?
Based on this question and the constant intangible movement between high and low tide, beginning an exploration between formal and sensible elements, between immovable and changing aspects, between our past and our present, as well as our communion with the native peoples and our present/future as society around the globe.
MAREA looks to reach broad and transcultural questions such as How are we going to live together with the sea?, and Where will we live once the sea and groundwater level rise? or How is our actual connection with the sea?. MAREA is a journey of discovery that, from the research and the journey to discussions and exhibitions, invites us to learn together, to acquire new knowledge across each others, to interpret the movement of water, of becoming, of time, to imagine a World of the future, in which, based on the sea, we can reach new ways of understanding and together build our own horizon of a better future.
1 Marea (esp) : Tide (eng), noun, femenine: The tide is the regular change in the level of the sea on the shore.
2 "The Pearl Button" by Patricio Guzmán (France, 2015), min. 19:25
