"Thinking-with Decorator Crabs: Lessons in Vulnerability in the Aquarium of Oceanic Possibilities"

Elizabeth Burmann Littin (Chile) Table C – Connectographies

This presentation will explore the artistic research project on which the article 'Thinking-with decorator crabs: Oceanic feminism and material remediation in the multispecies aquarium' is based, written with Jianni Tien, friend and colleague and academic at the University of Technology, Sydney, which was published in the latest volume of the Journal Feminist Review entitled 'Oceans'.

The article describes interactions with 4 decorator crabs and the various insights that emerged from caring for and thinking-with these crabs.

Situating myself from the recent oceanic turn in feminist studies (Alaimo 2019, Delourghey 2019, Neimanis 2019), I will delve into the ocean as a conceptual apparatus that leads us towards phenomena that do not dominate on the earth's surface, lacking attention and care. Oceanic materiality, as a transformative medium allows us to imagine new and distinct links that dissolve hierarchies and barriers between entities, creating an embodied environmental ethic that is necessary as a feminist challenge to the anthropocene.

Unfolding the different stages of the project, this paper is an invitation to dive into liquid materialities, and to learn-with the crafts of decorator crabs in the context of the aquarium as a means of study that allows us to think about ocean scale impacts and how they affect our own porous corporeality.