Reset>Mar Menor 2018

The Mar Menor, a coastal lagoon located in the Region of Murcia, deserves five protection figures at a regional, European and global level. It is an environmental enclave with a characteristic flora and fauna that endow the landscape with great beauty and uniqueness around which its particular idiosyncrasy was forged: traditional fishing, the extraction of salt and spas under the protection of calm and shallow waters.

Its special characteristics combined with the temperate climate of the region have led to the area having experienced strong economic development due mainly to intensive agriculture, the real estate boom and uncontrolled tourist exploitation. This situation, together with other economic, political and environmental factors, have led to an alarming state of deterioration: the ecosystem has lost its equilibrium and the effects of human action on the territory are being increasingly more alarming. The Anthropocene shows its effects in the Mar Menor.

In this context, this call raises the need to collectively think about a new story for the lagoon from the confrontation of its different imaginaries: tourist attraction, productive garden, dumping deposit, sports space, resort, natural oasis, complex system of matter hybrid in which nature and artifice, biology and technology, tradition and progress are amalgamated.

Through the articulation of knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, this call proposes to use the capacity of contemporary art and the practices of visuality as a vehicle to collectively imagine the future of the Mar Menor.