POROUS — Ports as Interspecies Dwelling

Organized by TBA21–Academy on the occasion of World Ocean Day, the United Nations Conference on the Oceans & Biennale des Arts et de l’Océan 2025, co-produced by TBA21, Villa Arson, Biennale d’Art de Nice, with the support of the European Commission Initiative S+T+ARTS4Water II 

The POROUS program took place at Villa Arson as a two-day multidisciplinary event exploring interspecies and oceanic imaginaries through performances, screenings, workshops, and installations by twelve international artists across five distinct spaces. 

Can ports—once gateways of exchange—be reimagined as porous spaces of interspecies cohabitation?

POROUS invited artists, scientists, technologists, and citizens to collectively explore this question through immersive experiences, discursive conversations, and creative experimentation.  

The two-day symposium and live program curated by María Montero Sierra blended keynote talks, roundtables, sound performances, film screenings, and hands-on workshops with a curated installation of contemporary artworks responding to the urgent ecological and social transformations along European coastlines. At the heart of the program were site-sensitive, artist-led inquiries into the role of ports as potential habitats and critical infrastructures—questioning their increasing isolation, their hyper-technologized present, and their possible futures as shared public spaces for humans and more-than-humans alike.  

Rooted in the transdisciplinary framework of S+T+ARTS4Water II, POROUS brought together a European network of ports and water bodies—spanning from the Venice Lagoon to the Bay of Koper, the Ciotat port at the Calanques National Park, the Scheldt Valley National Park to the Dublin coast, and beyond—each serving as a microcosm for pressing environmental challenges and emerging alliances across species and disciplines.  

Alongside the live program, Villa Arson hosted three ongoing installations:  the soundscape LACUNAE by Carlos Casas, Sea Bones and Lungs | Inhale, exhale, a series of paintings and a sculptural installation by Siobhán McDonald, and POLYMETER by Plastique Fantastique, an immersive, inflatable installation composed of three concentric, air-filled membranes.

Over the course of the weekend, a wide range of S+T+ARTS artists presented their work through lectures, performances, and participatory workshops. On Saturday evening, Adelita Husni Bey presented her residency research with the lecture-performance Le souffle du sol, delving into the history of the Marghera port, followed by Sounding Lines, a sound performance by Stijn Demeulenaere echoing how humans have shaped the North Sea, as well as a performative activation of Plastique Fantastique’s immersive installation.

Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos delivered a keynote lecture on the role, legal frameworks, and impact of ports for the environment, humans, and more-than-humans, after which Carlos Casas offered a live activation of the sound performance LACUNAE, an immersive auditory map of the Venice Lagoon. The evening concluded with a curated selection of short films produced by artists during their S+T+ARTS4WaterII residencies (Lara Tabet’s Enter Corridors, Siobhán McDonald’s Floating body, Lauren Moffatt’s Chorcorallium, and Territorial Agency’s Anthropocene Territory Scheldt).

On Sunday, Hypercomf led a family workshop where participants could learn about the Adriatic’s benthic ecosystems and the microorganisms that shape marine sediments and create their own shades of sediment-based paint. The two-day symposium and live program concluded with a discursive workshop with the program participants, led by María Montero Sierra  & Zoé Le Voyer, as an invitation to imagine together what kind of port is a porous port, one designed for a caring future. 

TBA21 organized a series of related events at the UN Ocean Conference in Nice and has invited artist Siobhán McDonald to screen her film Floating body and join a panel conversation with policymakers and mayors from coastal cities as part of TBA21’s presence at the Ocean Rise and Coastal Resilience Coalition Summit. The Summit is a global initiative uniting over 200 coastal cities and regions to combat sea level rise and promote coastal adaptation. The event in Nice brought together mayors, governors, and other local and regional government leaders, including Christian Estrosi (Mayor of Nice and Coalition President), alongside scientific, financial, and civil society partners to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and advocate for policy. 

TBA21 has been working on the legacy of POROUS — Ports as Interspecies Dwelling and will publish a digital collection of essays in November 2025. The collection, hosted on Ocean-Archive.org, will include contributions from guests and artists who participated in the event, reviews of the event, and commissioned reflective pieces from academics and philosophers.