THE OCEAN’S EDGE / LITORAL DO LIMITE: PIVÔ AND INVISIBLE DUST SELECTED FOR THE UK/BRAZIL SEASON OF CULTURE 2025/6

“The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place…For no two successive days is the shoreline precisely the same.” — Rachel Carson, The Edge of the Sea (1955).

Pivô (Brazil) and Invisible Dust (UK) are thrilled to announce that the project The Ocean’s Edge / Litoral do Limite has been awarded a major grant from the official programme of the UK/Brazil Season of Culture 2025–26 by the British Council and Instituto Guimarães Rosa.

Does the sea surround the land, or the land the sea? The Ocean’s Edge / Litoral do Limite draws inspiration from pioneering environmentalist, marine biologist and writer Rachel Carson, blending ocean science and Indigenous philosophies. It creates a confluence of the interdisciplinary, decolonial, and climate-focused approach of Pivô (Brazil), Invisible Dust (UK), and TBA21-Academy (Spain), fostering long-term international collaboration.

The Atlantic, the Earth’s great conveyor belt, holds a quarter of the planet’s water and underpins many of our ecosystems. Yet it faces urgent threats, including climate warming, overfishing, over development, and plastic pollution – issues that affect both the Brazilian and UK Atlantics.

Who are the voyagers in this ocean of our imagination, attuned to the flows of the possible? The project will involve three commissioned artists and a dynamic public programme designed to engage communities, scientists, and curators in a process of shared listening, learning, and creation in Brazil and the UK. The Ocean’s Edge / Litoral do Limite proposes a poetic and critical reflection on the Atlantic through a decolonial, transatlantic lens, at a moment when we vitally need new thinking and connections ‘to step from the Ocean’s Edge’.

Taking place from August 2025 to June 2026 – during a crucial year for global climate action on our oceans with COP30 in Belém, Brazil – the project is developed in dialogue with two world leading marine research laboratories: the Oceanographic Institute of the University of São Paulo Brazil (IO-USP) and the Scottish Association for Marine Science (UK). The project is also in dialogue with other institutions such as Bienal das Amazônias Belém (BR), Cátedra UNESCO para Sustentabilidade do Oceano (BR), Laboratório de Arte e Ciência Oceânica da Universidade de São Paulo (BR), Instituto de Ciências da Arte da Universidade Federal do Pará (BR), Cove Park (UK) and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (UK).