The Universal Sea Lab

„The Universal Sea – Pure or Plastic!? is an art and innovation project with three intertwined goals: Rediscovering the role of the artist in our society, revealing the opportunities of art meeting entrepreneurship, while fostering creative solutions to fight plastic waste in the waters.

To no other discipline, art engages in questioning and rethinking existing systems. Artists are in fact change agents, with the ability to affect society for the better. Expanding this process through co-creation and entrepreneurship will explore new business models for artists and motivate innovative solutions bringing forth ecological and social change. To do so the project brings together artists, art historians and public educators, innovative creative hubs, scientists researching “Waste in the Seas”, entrepreneurs and experts of entrepreneurial design and further more academic and innovative cultural actors.

Through a worldwide open call more than 250 creatives from around the globe applied with their artworks dealing with water in the Anthropocene.

By combining the most innovative artistic works chosen by an international jury ( mid March), the latest scientific insights and the best entrepreneurial know-how the project aims at gathering a community of people by fostering and developing new technologies to solve plastic dumping in the world. Therefore a dynamic online platform serves the change-makers as a hub and network to spread ideas, actions, and solutions.

The project was initiated by the Institute for Art and Innovation, a multidisciplinary institute that explores and promotes art and innovation as a means to foster social impact and change. Funded by the EU its main project partners are the Foundation of Entrepreneurship, Berlin, the Center for Polish Sculpture, Oronsko/Poland, HybridArt, Budapest/Hungary and the European Coastal Union EUCC

During 2018, all around Europe, activities such as art residences, public workshops and travelling exhibitions are organised to get the public involved. They also have been building a facebook base of like-minded people reaching 40k in a very short time and started collaborations with various universities around Europe, such as the Europa University Flensburg, the Mediadesign Hochschule Berlin, the Munich Business School, the Aalto University, Espoo and the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest.
In February 2018 the gallery WHITECONCEPTS serves as a lab for the project team. It gives an overview about the project activities and addresses issues of water pollution through free programs and public discourse.