The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures

The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures is led by India based multidisciplinary artist and researcher Sonia Mehra Chawla and creative producer, Miriam Walsh (ASCUS Art & Science, Edinburgh) in collaboration with Ray Interactive UK. The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures is an interdisciplinary inquiry into the fragile and endangered coastal ecosystems and wetland habitats of India and Scotland, and their vital role in building resilience to climate change. Coastal wetlands are the most biodiverse yet threatened ecosystems on our planet, imperiled by centuries of coastal development and now, increasingly, by rising sea levels and coastal erosion. 

This project stems from two incongruent yet inextricably interwoven futuristic imageries of anthropogenic impact on the planet: the desiccated planet and the submerged world. By mapping these two contrasting scenarios (droughts and floods), this project brings into focus the plants, organisms, creatures, and technologies that inhabit these spaces, while exploring the intertwined ecologies of human and nonhuman lives through entanglements of nature, culture, politics, industry, and economics. Drawing parallels between wetland habitats of India and Scotland, the project will engage audiences in interdisciplinary work that transcends borders and links the changing global landscapes of our planet, while building a stronger understanding of the role halophytic plants, microorganisms, coastal ecosystems, carbon sinks, and blue carbon play, as part of the climate change story. 

How can we leverage the power of science, technology, and the arts in a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach to help give coastal wetlands and their microbial worlds a warming, collective voice? We want to build a system that puts care-based labor at the core of an entangled more-than-human biosphere. A system that is shaped by our deep connections to our lands, soils, and waters. How can knowledge be produced, shared ,and disseminated between people, communities, and countries? How can we think globally and act locally, going forward? How can we connect conceptual changes in science with broader changes in worldview and values in society? How can art and science come together in ways that benefit the public? How can they teach us to inhabit our world in new, non-toxic ways?

The Rooted Sea: Halophytic Futures is led by India based multi-disciplinary artist Sonia Mehra Chawla and creative producer Miriam Walsh (ASCUS Art & Science), in collaboration with creative technology specialists Ray Interactive.