UCL research featured in Sea Change festival at the Royal Docks

Sea Change is a three-week event bringing together international artists with leading UCL academics, inspired by research into sustainable responses to the climate emergency. Four new commissions are exhibited by Simon Faithfull, Melanie Manchot, Dana Olărescu and Raqs Media Collective. The season also draws from the fascinating historical context of the Royal Docks.
Each artist collaborated with researchers from UCL to inform their work. 

• Simon Faithful spoke to the People and Nature Lab at UCL East, and visited their labs for his work Biotopes;
• For her work, Flotilla, Melanie Manchot invited Public History MA students to create oral histories with the communities involved in her film; 
• Dana Olărescu collaborated with Julia Tomei from the UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources on workshops for local residents around energy, and to cocreate the work Power In;
• Raqs Media Collective created The Waves are Rising in consultion with a number of researchers looking at shipping, weather monitoring and the Anthropocene including Mark Maslin from UCL Geography, Tristan Smith from UCL Energy Institute and Andy Hudson-Smith from UCL Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis

‘Sea Change’ is a term used for a substantial shift in situation or perspective and was first used in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, a play with a background, like the Royal Docks, of sea voyages, developing globalisation and colonialism. Sea Change points to the future, to the need for changing practices, but also alludes to a pivot point of the climate crisis in the dock’s history – the move from sail to steam power. This development led to an enormous expansion in London’s trade and exchange of goods and peoples, which enabled modern day industrialisation, globalisation and with it the problems of climate change. 

Linking future-facing science and research into sustainable solutions to climate change, biodiversity loss, energy, and urban futures, to the specific histories of the Docks site, this season of artists’ commissions highlights the need for a ‘sea change’ in order to face the future sustainably.

Invisible Dust, the Artistic Directors, have worked with the artists and UCL academics to identify areas for the artists to explore including the empire and trade, energy, nature and labour. The artists have been in dialogue with the sustainability research of UCL academics, including Earth System Science, People and Nature Lab,  Energy Institute, The Institute for Sustainable Resources and The Bartlett Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. They have brought this research together with local history and communities to set the season firmly in the local context.

Sea Change is part of a significant new programme of artworks and events highlighting sustainability in the light of the climate crisis, which will be presented at the Royal Docks as part of their new summer season At The Docks.

To find out more about Sea Change please visit the Royal Docks webpages.