Listening as a basis for representation

The North Sea and all life it contains should belong to itself, not to nation states, or private companies. The Embassy of the North Sea was founded on the basis of this principle and aims to represent the North Sea for its own sake. A common phrase, even in the environmentalist movement, is: ‘to give a voice to nature’. This implies a silent non-human world, waiting around to be saved, used, or enjoyed by humans. But in fact the non-human world is not silent. It is the work of the Embassy to listen, to tune in to these voices and to amplify them so they may resound in the political sphere.

The political voice of a sea

In his kickoff lecture Harpo ’t Hart, sound-artist and artistic director of the Embassy of the North Sea will present the listening methods and interdisciplinary research of the Embassy of the North Sea. He will speak about the work the Embassy is doing to move from listening to representation and share experiments and images of what a more direct political representation of the North Sea can look like. Finally he will introduce the School of Dogger Bank, a multidisciplinary research group investigating policy and spatial planning on the Dogger Bank with a strong focus on worldview, mythology and epistemology underlying North Sea politics.

Programme