The contribution to the exhibition continues an exploration of global maritime risk cultures. Speculatively expanding on the aesthetics and materialities of seafaring, the project traces intersections between contemporary risk management systems and the embodied knowledge of seafarers who navigate both natural forces and technical infrastructures.
The term “risk” emerged in the medieval Mediterranean, first appearing in maritime insurance contracts that quantified potential damages to enable trade across uncertain seas. These early instruments mapped risk onto the ocean, effectively extending the safety of land into maritime space. Today, insurance models continue this legacy, transforming oceanic uncertainties into virtual risk landscapes and commodified assets that sustain global trade.
The project takes form through a series of risograph prints and a carpet evoking portolans, medieval books of sailing directions—reimagined here as speculative, non-linear charts that trace shifting relationships between data, bodies, and oceanic space, rather than fixed routes or destinations. Juxtaposing the view from a simulated container ship bridge with imaginary coastal landscapes bearing signposts, the risographs embody the tension between the actuary, who develops risk models, and the seafarer, who both move through maritime space—one virtually, the other physically. Their paths cross at points of tension, where different views on risk meet: what seems like a safety measure from an actuarial risk management point of view may pose an operational obstacle or even increase danger from the seafarer’s perspective. These images can be seen in that light: the ship simulation represents a distant, digital view—steady, yet detached and hard to grasp. At the same time, the place names along the shoreline carry echoes of early, intuitive knowledge about the dangers of this shifting boundary between land and sea.
The two carpets are stretching over a landscape conceived by Diogo Passarinho Studio (Diogo Passarinho and Gonçalo Reynolds) in collaboration with the Eindhoven based design studio Atelier NL. It consists of clay excavated during the widening of the River Maas and the reinforcement of its dikes.
Find more information and a documentation of the exhibition here.
