Disturbing Conservation
Curated by Dani Admiss, Gillian Russell. Graphic Design by Benjamin Redgrove and Exhibition Design by Interesting Projects.
Disturbing Conservation: Remapping the Avencas MPA was an alternative Interpretation Centre for the Avencas Marine Protected Area (MPA). Staged at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology (MAAT), Lisbon Portugal, the project examined what role cultural institutions might play in ecological conservation initiatives, while encouraging visitors to reflect upon their relationship and responsibilities to Marine Protected Areas.
In ecological conservation, MPAs are legally designated habitats designed to regulate a tidal territory for the long-term conservation of nature. They protect wildlife at the same time as they are entangled with issues of species hierarchy, conflicts with aquaculture, infrastructure, governance and more. The decisions made about the management and protection of marine environments are not in themselves neutral acts but are bound to societal values and wider sociocultural-economic systems. Disturbing Conservation reimagined MPAs in this expanded sense, not just as physical sites for ecological recovery but also as the object of a social challenge.
In MAAT the Interpretation Centre worked to cultivate a new conservation imaginary. Its point of departure was to re-imagine interpretation as an infrastructure and mediating system for visualizing the lesser-cared-for concerns attached to marine conservation areas. Each display and accompanying series of events borrowed from feminism, queer studies and more-than-human positions to bring forth other stories and realities, by taking care of what and who is being represented in the Centre. Through deep timelines, expanded food chains, a bill of rights for the Ocean and empathy cards, the interpretation centre begins to articulate some of the absent concerns and entangled complexities that produce the contemporary space of the Avencas so that we may better care with an MPA.
