Portable Memories in Rising Seas

Fifty-Fifty is an artist collective founded by Lisa Bulawsky and Laurencia Strauss, working at the intersection of individual experience and the public sphere, negotiating cultural tensions through socially engaged participatory art practices.

Portable Memories in Rising Seas, a project by Fifty-Fifty, is a socially engaged, multi-media project about sea level rise. The project works to connect memory and climate change to create antidotes for grief. Using the force of memory, the project evokes a sense of interdependence with others facing the force of water. The uncertainties brought by current climate change predictions are a threat to place and are also a catalyst for expression and a renewed sense of belonging.

Portable Memories in Rising Seas is a sequence of activities, culminating in iterative exhibitions. Each part of the process – film screenings, participatory drawing, interactive dialogue, underwater video, prints, posters, books, and zines – is valued as vital to the project’s success and impact. Using interdisciplinary art methodologies, the project creates possibility for participants to see themselves and other communities grapple with the climate crisis as they reflect on their notions of home.