Radical Ocean Futures featured in new setup at the Baltic Sea Festival

Radical Ocean Futures was launched towards the end of Centre researcher Andrew Merrie’s PhD. It is centered around four scientifically grounded multimedia narratives of potential alternate futures for the global ocean.

The project has previously been exhibited at the UN Oceans Conference, at the Science Museum in London and most recently as part of Greentopia at Way Out West.

At the Baltic Sea Festival, it is being featured in a never before seen form on the 31 August 2024. Brenda El Rayes, composer, DJ & sound engineer, in collaboration with Andrew Merrie and the Tekniska Museet team has reimagined the project as an immersive audio-visual installation. It will have its premiere in the innovative wisdome at Tekniska museet. After the immersive experience, a Q&A session about the project will follow with a focus on the value of imagination and storytelling for more sustainable futures. Then, the audience will be invited to try their hands at science fiction prototyping in a workshop focused on the future of the Baltic Sea.

“I’m touched to see that this project continues to resonate and lives on and on, in ever new forms, reaching new audiences. Unfortunately, the messages behind the project continues to strike home. There is still the possibility to bring our global ocean back from the brink but each year the science gets more alarming. We need to apply our imaginations and take urgent action so that we can work towards bringing to life stories of futures that feature a living biosphere and a thriving humanity,” says Andrew Merrie.

The four stories represent four different futures that the ocean could face, centered around four scientifically grounded multimedia narratives of potential alternate futures for the global ocean.

The beautiful and engaging artworks that are a feature of the Radical Ocean Futures project were created by the world-renowned Swedish concept artist and illustrator Simon Stålenhag. His work has been featured in The Verge, Gizmodo and others. He has had a TV series made based on his book Tales from the Loop and a film directed by the Russo brothers based on his book The Electric State starring Milly Bobby-Brown of Stranger Things fame will be released on Netflix later in 2024.

The Baltic Sea Festival is a music and art festival organized by Sveriges Radio Berwaldhallen.

If you want to attend the event on 31 August 2024, you will need to buy a ticket via the Baltic Sea Festival website.

Baltic Sea Festival Science Lab

Stockholm Resilience Centre is also part of the Baltic Sea Festival's Science Lab – a joint communicative project concerning issues around the Baltic Sea and sustainability. Six young composers and six young researchers were matched and together they create new works that combine innovative Baltic Sea-related research with brand-new music. This year’s themes are viability and circularity, looking beyond technical innovations toward how society can move from linear to circular consumption.