The interesting Homo Aquaticus: HABITAT ST21 exhibition at INTERACTIONS 2023

One of the go-to events in Split for designers and all those interested in design is the upcoming INTERACTIONS – the workshop and exhibition in production of the Arts Academy of the University of Split and the Department of Visual Communication Design.

The Homo Aquaticus edition of INTERACTIONS will discuss the potential effects of global climate change as well as the local context of the Adriatic and Mediterranean in terms of technology, economics, and politics.

The INTERACTIONS 2023: Homo Aquaticus workshop will be held from October 11th to 14th at the Department of Visual Communication Design of the Arts Academy of the University of Split as a part of the discursive program of the Croatian pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale.

The workshop’s outcomes will be displayed and made public as part of the Croatian pavilion’s presentation during the Venice Architecture Biennale.

What we wanted to focus on is the upcoming exhibition Homo Aquaticus: HABITAT ST21 set to open on October 5th in the Arts Gallery in Split.

Following in the footsteps of Oleg Šuran and Ivica Mitrović‘s previous works, the project Homo Aquaticus: HABITAT ST21 once again deals with the future. It was inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s visit to Split in 1977 and reflects the present of the city torn between unplanned tourism and galloping climate changes.

The project also serves as a continuation of the previous research, exhibited in the Art Gallery in 2021, which dealt with local communities, i.e. their resilience, the authors return to speculation in cooperation with the Institute of Oceanography and the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Naval Architecture.

Through speculation, the project Homo Aquaticus: HABITAT ST21 continues to investigate the possible implications of the global climate, as well as technological, economic, and political futures in the local context of the Adriatic.

Critically referencing the romanticized high-modernist visions of the future and life under the sea, which have become part of our popular culture, i.e. the underwater constructions “Précontinent” by Jacques Cousteau, the authors focus on potential utopian underwater dwellings and communities of the near future, as well as on local, micro models resistance and speculate about the possible return of man to the sea, inspired by Cousteau’s idea of “The Sea Man” (Homo Aquaticus).

Šuran and Mitrović speculate about places that are not places of utopian restart, but places of transition of the present towards some new and different identities and collective futures of the city.

The exhibition is part of the intensive discursive program of the Croatian pavilion at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, and, as part of the exhibition, the previously mentioned international INTERACTIONS 2023: Homo Aquaticus workshop will be held at the Academy of Arts, which will, with interdisciplinarity and through education, deal with several topics that this particular exhibition opens up for discussion.