The Ocean as Method
Most of us have been trained to think about things: to observe, analyse, conclude. And that is something the ocean goes beyond, and that we can learn from.
The ocean moves before we have a question; they answer before we finish speaking, and have been here longer than language and will be here long after every framework we have built to make sense of the world.
Ocean as Method is a practice inspired by embodied practices and as a genuine epistemological proposition: that the ocean is a teacher, a collaborator, a co-author. That the body holds ways of knowing. That fluidity, rhythm, and relational frameworks are ways of knowing that can reconfigure how we think, feel, design, and inhabit the world.
In this session, we will be with the ocean.
Through embodied invitations drawn from tidal movement, somatic micro-practices of listening, and speculative gestures in writing and drawing, participants are invited into a different relationship with knowledge: one that emphasises care over mastery, attunement over extraction, and interdependence over the isolated thinking subject.
The session aims to be spacious, holding rest and intensity. Perhaps more importantly, it does not ask you to arrive knowing anything at all. It asks: what becomes possible when you stop trying to stand above the water, and flow?
Dr. Lígia Oliveira is an artist, designer, and researcher whose practice moves between ecological thinking, regenerative design, and more-than-human relationships. Her work has taken form in collaborations with the TBA21 Academy, the Croatia Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale, the European Commission, and the Mind & Life Institute. She is based in southern Portugal, where the Atlantic is always present.