Mirjam
Yazïra
Kroker

Intertidal Treaties:
Juridical Cosmograms for
a Breathing Ocean

(since 2025 ongoing)

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On the coasts of this planet, the tides rise and fall with extraordinary amplitude. Sculpted by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun, immense intertidal zones materialize and dissolve twice daily. This space is not merely transitional, but an amphibious simultaneity where the qualities of both land and sea are inseparably fused. It exposes the ocean‘s temporary underbody: salt-scored textures and fleeting microclimates. In this cosmic breathing cycle, the boundary between land and sea is not static but perpetually in flux and consistently negotiated. The project Intertidal Treaties: Juridical Cosmograms for a Breathing Ocean is an artistic field research that explores how creative practices can cultivate altered forms of juridical imagination. It investigates the potential of intertidal zones as living planetary archives, registers in constant transformation, and sites for the negotiation of different types of legal imagination. It positions itself as a counter point to imperial traditions of claiming the sea as property, addressing the urgent necessity of recognizing water as a legal subject. This inquiry begins with an unrelenting reading of two distinct archives: the juridical archives of a violent colonial past and hydrological archives that document the moon’s forces on the tides. 

 

Intertidal Treaties is a juridical cosmopoetic experiment that fundamentally re-articulates art’s possibilities in an era of planetary crisis. It moves beyond representation to stage a communality of practice, contributing with its imaginaries and Juridical Cosmograms to a critical ontological turn in confronting the very ground of justice. Rather than offering fixed conclusions, the work stages research based rehearsals of impermanence, opening a field in which jurisprudence can be profoundly re-articulated. This project is a direct and decisive contribution to a global movement that expands jurisprudence beyond human subjects, fundamentally challenging the traditions of claimed sovereignty by extending a system of law to include oceans, rivers, and all other matter.