What does it mean to care for a place? And what happens to the things that fall outside our maps of protection?

Disturbing Conservation is an artistic and curatorial research project developed by Dani Admiss and Gillian Russell for MAAT Mode at the Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology in Lisbon.

Taking the Avencas Marine Protected Area on Portugal's Atlantic coast as its starting point, the project explores how conservation is shaped by the ways people observe, classify, map and govern the natural world.

Marine protected areas are established to safeguard biodiversity, drawing boundaries around places and species considered valuable or threatened. Yet these boundaries also raise questions about what is included in our understanding of an ecosystem, whose knowledge informs its protection and what remains beyond the reach of existing conservation practices.

Through an interdisciplinary school bringing together marine biologists, artists, designers and curators, Disturbing Conservation proposed alternative forms of field research and mapping. Working across scientific, artistic and curatorial methods, the project sought to trace overlooked relationships, from microorganisms and chemical pollutants to the wider social and ecological processes that shape marine environments.

Rather than treating maps as neutral descriptions of the world, the project approached them as active forms of worldmaking. Maps influence what can be seen, understood and cared for. By experimenting with different forms of representation, Disturbing Conservation asked how mapping might become a more inclusive and attentive practice.

The research was conceived around an alternative interpretation centre at MAAT, where these different mappings could make visible the often-neglected relationships through which the marine environment is continually made and remade.

At its heart, Disturbing Conservation asks how expanding what counts as knowledge might also expand what counts as care.

Format: Workshop, Exhibition installation. Artistic research, experimental mapping and interdisciplinary learning

People & Partners

Developed and curated by: Dani Admiss and Gillian Russell

Commissioned for: maat Mode, MAAT — Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lisbon

Research collaborators: An interdisciplinary group of marine biologists, artists, designers and curators

Research site: Avencas Marine Protected Area, Parede, Cascais, Portugal

Related research: Mapping as Caring, an interview between Dani Admiss and Beatrice Leanza for MAAT Extended.

Further Reading

Mapping as Caring — Dani Admiss in conversation with Beatrice Leanza