Long before the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), lines have been creatively imagined to carve up and parse out ocean space. The Treaty of Tordesillas bifurcated the sea between the Portuguese Empire and the Crown of Castile per the authority of Pope in 1494. A tracing of the historical methods and instrumentation of territorializing the terraqueous globe presents alternating visions of surveying land from the sea and sea from the land, making explicit the relational terms of land/sea divisions.
Our Geographic Foci
Liminal materials and spaces
Considering subterranean and deep spaces through questions of access to earthly materials and the politics of resource extraction. Mud, sand, sediment, ooze of coastlines, seafloors, mobile and mixed as plumes and other transported suspensions change land and seascapes.
‘Landlocked’ states
Landlockedness is not a static legal or physical characteristic but an ongoing process shaped by historical and political constructs. Beyond traditional geographical definitions, there is an intricate interplay of social, economic, cultural, geographical, and political factors in determining who has access to ocean space and resources and who does not. Beyond rigid classifications of landlocked states may lie more inclusive and adaptable approaches to global oceans.
Coast ‘lines’
Drawing a finite boundary that can define a coastline is complicated by its complex and jagged geography. Not only is the coast line a broad area of shifting and mixing but also the decision about what scale of intricacy to discern inevitably impacts the outcome of the measurement. The boundary where land and sea intersect is determined by the ocean’s height, manifesting materially as a realm of coastal features and produced politically as baselines. Defined through international treaties, baselines are the low-water line upon which national boundaries are traced. Yet, this line between adjoining mediums of land and sea is much more physically blurred and dynamic than represented politically and legally.
Outputs
A coastline is no line, but a relationship, a fuzzy boundary at best. Coastal features exhibit fractal and infinite natures.
Marine Political Ecology Collective 