This Fall Repatriaties collaborates with OCEAN / UNI as part of the Repatriates exhibition project taking place at Ocean Space from March to October 2026.

Together, we are organizing a free online, transdisciplinary didactic initiative that explores filmmaking through the lens of directors and artists embedded in saltwater communities, highlighting their role as ocean caretakers.

OCEAN / UNI is TBA21–Academy’s itinerant pedagogical platform, an ever-evolving online learning initiative shaped by bodies of water, knowledge, and the people who care for them. It is a space where art, scholarship, and activism converge. This Fall 2025, OCEAN / UNI returns with a new chapter: Spaces of Collaboration.The semester focuses on moving image as a strategy of repatriation, guided by filmmakers, thinkers, and caretakers deeply connected to saltwater communities.

About the Semester

This semester of OCEAN / UNI is designed to prepare students for their own lens-based research by sharing methods, ethics, and strategies for working in sensitive watery environments.

Through case studies from Namibia, Peru, Chile, and Australia by authors based in these specific communities, we will reflect on the power of historical archives as they return to inspire contemporary art practices.

The repatriation of practices, intellectual properties, and intangible cultures related to Ocean stewardship will be our focus this semester. Together, we will enquire into the Ocean’s role and agency in artistic image production, engaging with cultural practices that relate to ancestral knowledge, identity, and collective healing.

Informed by Indigenous studies, particularly within Oceanic, Latinx*, and African artistic research methodologies, the Fall 2025 program adopts the moving image as a medium of repatriation through experimental documentary filmmaking, participatory learning, and relational aesthetics that prioritize collaboration and situated knowledge.

Guest speakers include:

• Joel Kaudife Haikali – reclaiming African stories through lens-based resistance

• Britten Syd Andrews – storytelling for social impact

• Kasimir Burgess – exploring the intersections of art, music, and film

• Karmen Franinović – leading a Zurich University of the Arts research group exploring sensory interfaces of ocean and technology

• Roman Kirschner – artist and designer whose work unfolds processes of metamorphosis

• Alfredo Ledesma Quintana and Liliana Gómez – bridging Indigenous ritual and philosophical inquiry

• Seba Calfuqueo – listening to the desires of water through Mapuche and Latinx thought

• Adéwolé Faladé and Sénami Donoumassou – confronting the echoes of the transatlantic slave trade through cultural activism and archival resistance

Registration: Register for the upcoming semester of OCEAN / UNI here.

OPEN CALL for participants: OCEAN / UNI Activations

On Filmmaking: co-creating narratives with Joel Kaudife Haikali

October 22 – December 8, 2025

OCEAN / UNI Activations: On Filmmaking — Co-creating Narratives with Joel Haikali

Are you a filmmaker or storyteller interested in decolonizing strategies in moving images?
See more details and apply to our workshop-style online activations HERE.

Program Schedule

Venue: Zoom, Ocean-Archive.org & ocean comm/un/ity

All sessions take place live online via Zoom, biweekly on Wednesdays at 6 pm CET
(1 pm AST // 7 pm SAST // 12 pm EST // 10:30 pm IST // 2 pm BRT)

Wednesday, October 22, 6 pm CEST
PROLOGUE – Session 1: Saltwater Filmmakers
Guests: Britten Syd Andrews, Kasimir Burgess, and Joel Kaudife Haikali

Wednesday, November 5, 6 pm CET
Session 2: Interfacing the Ocean
Guests: Karmen Franinović, Roman Kirschner

Wednesday, November 19, 6 pm CET
Session 3: Collective Construction of a Sculptural Monument with the Ocean
Guests: Liliana Gómez, Alfredo Ledesma Quintana

Wednesday, December 3, 6 pm CET
Session 4: Exploring Interconnectedness with Water
Guests: Seba Calfuqueo (additional guest TBC)

Wednesday, December 10, 6 pm CET
EPILOGUE – Session 5: Crossing the Ocean Back and Forth, or the Scripting of Shared Histories
Guests: Sènami Donoumassou, Adéwolé Faladé

Partners

Academic:
Central European University, Austria
Centro de Arte y Ciencia, Universidad Nacional de General San Martín, Argentina
Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Italy
Universität Kassel, Germany
Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland

Institutions and NGOs:
Joe Vision Production, Namibia
Mewihonto Association, Benin Republic

*A gender-neutral or non-binary alternative to Latino/Latina.