TIDAL ArtS

The TIDAL ArtS residency programme supports year-long artist residencies across four major river and sea basins in Europe. CAA hosts the residency taking place in the Turku Archipelago, in the Baltic-North Sea basin from May 2026 until April 2027. The other residency locations are Azores Archipelago, Danube River and Venice Lagoon. The residencies combine artistic production with public engagement, workshops and collaborative activities. They provide artists with time, space and support to research and develop artistic works that carry the conversation about marine and freshwater health beyond the life of the project.

The residency artist in Turku Archipelago is Clara Jo, whose project “Living Archive of Water” will explore water as a living co-narrator of ecological memory and collective storytelling. The project attends to lived relationships with the Baltic Sea—daily practices, currents, seasonal rhythms, and emotional ties. It unfolds across three interconnected temporal registers: listening to the past through memories shaped by maritime life and language; attending to present urgencies such as pollution, warming waters, species shifts, and the erosion of intangible cultural heritage under climate pressures; and imagining resilient ocean futures grounded in reciprocity and community-led stewardship. The three layers will form a living archive, which will grow over time.

TIDAL ArtS empowers artists to collaborate with communities and scientists to create artworks that inspire action for our ocean and waters. It offers grants to artists, collectives, and creatives to support the European Union’s Mission to Restore Our Ocean and Waters by 2030. Using a tidal logic, the project fosters connections between disciplines and species. TIDAL ArtS emphasizes that human bodies, composed primarily of water, are both materially and semiotically entwined with other water bodies. By taking water as both a subject and praxis, the project engages with the cyclical movement of water as a co-design methodology. TIDAL ArtS is supported by the European Commission’s Horizon programme.