Maritime Imagination by Mikki StelderSONIC ACTS BIENNIAL 202216 October 2022 – Likeminds, Amsterdam, The NetherlandsThinking of the future imaginary of water invites a journey back into its unsettled past. In 1609, Dutch East India Company lawyer and state ideologue Hugo de Groot crafted the notion of ‘mare liberum’, or the free sea, turning the ocean into a commodity ready to be exploited. Tracing the colonial undercurrent of our maritime imagination across time, interdisciplinary researcher and writer Mikki Stelder is interested in how the ocean’s very materiality actively resists notions of commodification perpetuated by today’s legal narratives.Sonic Acts Biennial 2022 took place at various locations in Amsterdam, interweaving an exhibition, sound performances and discourse programme, accompanied by artist presentations, workshops, excursions and more. As a part of the Biennial programme, the Leaving Traces symposium opened up a forum in which to become attentive to pollution’s invisible, yet harmful touch. Actively rethinking our relation to the climate and our planetary legacies, an array of artists, researchers, curators, and scholars spoke of the many faces of toxicity – from fossil fuels to plastic, from nuclear energy to chemical pollutants. The gathering staged real stories and events of exposure, thinking about ‘leaving traces’ not just as the material act of spreading toxicity, but as art’s potential to reach out and act as a disruptive force in the world.Find out more at https://sonicacts.com/archive/biennial2022Curation & production: Sonic ActsRecording: Engage! TV https://engagetv.comSound mastering: Monty Mouw http://flippendisks.comDesign: Catalogtree https://catalogtree.netSound logo: Roc Jiménez de Cisneros http://www.vivapunani.org/