The DRIFTERS PROJECT, begun by Pam Longobardi in 2006 after encountering the mountainous piles of plastic the ocean was regurgitating on remote Hawaiian beaches, has worked directly through local sponsorship, small grant support and personal expenditure by cleaning beaches, making art and working with communities in Beijing, China (NY Arts Beijing, 2008); in Atlanta, Georgia (New Genre Landscape, 2008); in Nicoya, Costa Rica (Chorotega Sede/Universidad Nacional, 2009); in Samothraki, Greece (EVROS Cultural Association and PAI 2010); in Monaco (Nouveau Museé National de Monaco 2011); in Seward, Alaska and Alaskan Peninsula, Katmai National Park as part of the GYRE Expedition (Alaska SeaLife Center 2011, Anchorage Museum 2013-4 and CDC Museum in Atlanta, 2015); in Kefalonia, Greece (Ionion Center, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014) with the 2014 birth of Plastic Free Island, and in Armila, Panama in collaboration with women artists of the Guna Yala community there. Longobardi and the Drifters Project was recently featured in National Geographic, commissioned for the cover of SIERRA magazine, and was a guest on the Weather Channel. Longobardi is Distinguished Professor at Georgia State University in Atlanta and Artist-In-Nature for Oceanic Society.
THE CONSCIOUS OCEAN proposes a collaboration between art, science, activism and like-minded groups that begins with the assumption that the ocean is a conscious entity that, in many different ways, from rising levels and temperatures to declining fish stocks to coral bleaching and finally to the deformed material plastic objects that float the world round, is attempting to communicate its declining state of being. The CONSCIOUS OCEAN also proposes that, though geo-political boundaries and naming have created numerous different ‘oceans’ and ‘seas’, it is ONE WORLD OCEAN, one continuous, flowing, interconnected liquid entity.
Please visit the official Drifters Project website for further information: driftersproject.net