Held on Monday March 22nd, the 2021 edition of the Master Symposium was a collective all-day event organised by the HEAD’s MA in Visual Arts Department: Work.Master, CCC, and TRANS. This year, the artist Ayesha Hameed was invited to define the theme and invite the speakers.

Titled Uncanny Ocean, the symposium focused on one aspect of the ocean – how little we know about it.

They say we know more about outer space than about the bottom of the sea. The symposium took the unknowability of the ocean as a starting point to think about the aquatic as a material and a medium. Exploring the mystery of the ocean as well as its rich and complex history of migration, trade and violence also enables us to consider spells, time out of joint, time travel, visionary fiction and other possible worlds.

This article rounds up the video recordings of the speakers’ lectures: Stefan Helmreich, Jota Mombaça, RAQS Media Collective (Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi and Shuddhabrata Sengupta), Mao Mollona, Stefano Harney, and Rajiv Mohabir.