Pororoca

Tidal Diaries

In a time where rivers and oceans continue to voice their discontent, and where some ways of being in the world - even if silenced - insist on refusing and reclaiming, Tidal Diaries draws on situated bodies of water and on our personal experiences in estuaries and brackish waters of Brazil, Colombia and the UK, to explore possibilities for similar, distant or imagined aqueous territories always foregrounding deep listening and gratitude.

Within the liminal space of the Pororoca - as of our Tidal Diaries classroom - many worlds come together, collide and merge. The course’s ambition is to expand Pororoca’s communities and situated practices, by inviting a multiplicity of voices and activations to join us in re-tracing possible lives for these and other bodies of water.

Throughout this curriculum participants will engage in spatial and creative practices, affective landscapes, silenced voices, political imaginaries, hydro-geographies and ecologies of brackish waters. Honouring the specificity of life-stories offered to us in each immersion, and to further understand the possible meanings and worlds they contribute to shape, each of our sessions is framed thematically by one of the many words / worldviews encountered: 1. ‘to immerse’ 2. ‘to fall into - to embrace’ 3.‘to discipline - to flow’ 4. ’to pollute - to cultivate’ 5. ‘to listen - to listen’ 6. ‘to dispossess - to resist - to reclaim’. As a group we will dwell on each, whilst engaging in critical creative explorations directed by suggested activations which are set in dialogue to each session’s theme. We will be joined by special guests in some of our sessions.

○ Tidal Territories
○ Aqueous Embodiments
○ Situated Knowledges
○ Non-Extractive
○ Deep Listening
○ Gratitude
○ Affective Immersions

This course comprises close reading discussion, screenings, mini lectures, group activities, guest speakers, and generative writing and art. Participants will read and discuss core textual, audio, and video sources and create an assemblage of activations (material, spatial, sonic, and written) that will shape our relationship to aqueous territories.

Tidal Diaries_a first pedagogical iteration of the project Pororoca: abraz(ç)o de río y mar for the Center for Planetary Pedagogies (C4PP).

Session 1 To immerse

Offers space for thinking about what it means to be in water and the quotidian and vital relationship between bodies and waters.

Session 2 To fall into / To embrace

(desembocar) describes the action of rivers arriving to the sea, speaking of estuarine territories and other aqueous entities that are porous, uncertain but shaped by movement.

Session 3 To discipline / To flow

Explores ways of contesting manmade controlling forces through exploring architectures that nurture symbiotic relationships with water.

Session 4 To pollute / To cultivate

Focuses on cultivating, filtering, tasting and nurturing waters.

Session 5 To listen / To listen

Engages in deep listening and envisions aqueous spaces of relationality and co-existence.

Session 6 To dispossess / To resist / To reclaim

Embraces narratives and histories of resistance, reclamation, and fugitivity, concluding with a final creative share.

Collaboratively we will work on an assemblage of activations (material, spatial, sonic, written - a collection of engagements and generative art and writing) which aim to counter the epistemic values through which extractive forces and capitalist accumulation claim to shape our relationship to these aqueous territories. These will contribute to Pororoca’s emerging assemblage of voices (the outcome of our immersions in Brazil, Colombia, and the UK), now amplified by those of the participants.

To credit this project initiative use:

Tidal Diaries, a pedagogical experience developed by Catalina Mejia Moreno and Felipe Arturo for the Centre of Planetary Pedagogies of re:arc Institute. Tidal Diaries is part of Pororoca, a project led by Catalina Mejia Moreno in collaboration with Felipe Arturo and Gabriela Leandro Pereira. Funded by re:arc institute public discourse initiative. 2023/2024. All rights reserved.

Tidal Diaries

Pororoca as project, and Tidal Diaries, Pororoca’s pedagogical iteration of these immersions, have been shaped by three people - Felipe Arturo, Gabriela Leandro Pereira and Catalina Mejia Moreno -, absorbing, observing, feeling and listening together to the histories and stories of the three brackish waters they jointly decided to immerse in. We navigated through, and treasured every voice listened to and every life story shared - even our own. Therefore, it is important to note that, even Tidal Diaries as a curriculum appears as 6 invitations only, they have been indelibly shaped by more than a year of dialogue, thinking and engagement between Catalina Mejia Moreno and Felipe Arturo as joint tutors of this module and Gabriela Leandro Pereira, in conversation with the many voices who generously shared with us throughout these journeys.

We are very grateful to re:arc Institute for their continuous support and trust. Our special and heartfelt thanks go to Alice Grandoit-Šutka, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Agatha Prieto Jeanty and to our first cohort of participants.