The dry, the wet, and the damp : oceans, shipwrecks, and sea sculptures in ecological crisis

In this thesis, I argue that shipwreck objects, such as concretions, encrustations, and sea sculptures, are embodiments of the fluid hybrid intersections between art, ecology, and Anthropos, functioning together as vibrant materializations of psychoanalyst Felix Guattari’s three ecologies and Ecosophy. From their original conception as early modern trade objects, their transformation by the submarine post-shipwreck, and finally, their eventual aestheticization in collections and galleries, these objects directly challenge dualist binaries between “wet” and “dry” ontologies. They exist as neither this nor that, here nor there, naturalia nor artificialia, the one nor the other, alive nor dead, thereby blurring the boundary between humans and nature and the terrestrial and submarine. I suggest that a material ecocritical approach will inherently bind these fluctuating objects to their underwater visuality within the Anthropocene, as well as the ways they represent, challenge, and materialize ecological crises. Tracing these objects through key historical points, beginning in the Early Modern period, indicates that concretions function as a recurring aesthetic form through which Western culture has historically metabolized ecological anxiety about the oceanic. By reading these objects through a “damp” framework, one that holds dry and wet ontologies in a productive tension, it aids us in considering how humans, ecology, and meaning have been and continue to be hydrologically entangled, offering an approach to aesthetics and ecology that will provide models for fostering better ecological care and kinship. Going from dryland to the sea’s surface and into the enigmatic realm of the submarine, donning our wetsuits and diving apparatuses, I destabilize not only standard art historical and theoretical rigidity but the very solidity of terra firma.