F.O.C.A is a non profit foundation metaphysically located in Punta Colorada, Uruguay.

The ocean is an indivisible landscape. Everything within it is in omniscient contact. From the birth of its infinite beings, their reproduction, their feeding, their behavior, their learning and their final transmutation at the time of their death, either because they are prey or because their time has come. All this occurs within a unique amniotic cosmogony. F.O.C.A. invokes the energetic indivisibility through the loving contemplation of the Ocean in order to extract from its depths an artistic experience that escapes the nets of the fishermen of language.

        .---.
       /o   o\
    __(=  "  =)__
     //\'-=-'/\\
        )   (_
       /      `"=-._
      /       \     ``"=.
     /  /   \  \         `=..--.
 ___/  /     \  \___      _,  , `\
`-----' `""""`'-----``"""`  \  \_/
                             `-`

What does F.O.C.A. mean? (before we move forward, let’s try to translate F.O.C.A. We guess it’s something like, Foundation for the Oceanic Contemplation of Affection or S.E.A.L: Sea Endeavor for Admiration and Love). Let’s move on now:

When seals swim in the ocean, they swim in all directions. Their spine, contrary to our rectilinear perception of time, can move in all dimensions of the oceanic X-Y-Z. Forward, backwards, to the side and around, to elegantly return back to wherever they were. If we could convince a seal to kindly hold a paintbrush with their mouth and paint while swimming, we would find ourselves observing a three-dimensional doodle of games, interactions and bonds. The seal is an authentic innate painter in the eternal blue of the oceanic canvas.  So what is “affectionate contemplation”? It certainly requires to dissolve ourselves into what is contemplated, in order to lose the sense of hierarchy and separation that exists between the roles of the contemplator and what is contemplated. For example, when we smell a rose, the rose smells itself through us, ultimately, the cosmos smells its own creation within the indivisibility of events. Affectionate contemplation is the communion of roles that dissolves all individual limitations. Similar to the seal’s spine, affectionate contemplation has the ability to move in all directions of space-time, opening us to an elastic contemplation of our eternal nature and its endless possibilities and roles that broaden our perception. Exercising affectionate contemplation has the poetic power of uniting us with a cosmos that has no beginning or end, and helping us understand what cosmic consciousness is, who we are, and how we can develop emotional empathy.

F.O.C.A is born from the emotional glow that the sea feels for the sun when its waves dance with the wind.  Can an oceanic perception of the world become a foundation? Yes. Redundantly, in the ocean everything is connected all together. F.O.C.A is a poetic & artistic tool, a medium foundation of transpersonal contemplation and communion with the sea and its tides, stories, storms, its serenity, beings, interactions and the endless ways the ocean walks the world to silently return back to its own source. In the same way as a river returns to the sea to dissolve in the complexity of its eternal cycles and just as the seal goes out of the ocean to sunbathe and pose photogenically on a stone and then to once again dive into the darkness of mystery, F.O.C.A is an artistic foundation that dives into the sea to bring knowledge from its poetic depths, exist in the dry world and return again to its source, allowing in each of these cycles to expand the poetic possibilities of the ocean.

The next image is the foundational stone of F.O.C.A. The photo is a visual manifesto, free from the ties of language. Giving a bottle to an orphaned baby seal while acting metabolically as a maternal-father is fulfilling an absent role. It is offering your nose so that the cosmos smells the rose. This maternal encounter is an image that can move in all directions, enter all eyes, speak all languages. This foundational energy is a backbone of F.O.C.A. that aims to swim free through the heavy matter of the world.

In its beginning F.O.C.A. will act as an oceanic archive commissioning texts and works of art linked to using affective contemplation as a tool of dissolution within the salt of the ocean. In the same way that divers use a neoprene suit to explore the ocean,  F.O.C.A.  provides a suit for the ocean to exist in the world. F.O.C.A will open its physical space for residencies and activities in spring 2025 in Punta Colorada, Uruguay.

The Foundation has the support of the following Little Mermaids:

CHUS MARTINEZ
FILIPA RAMOS
FUNDACION BOTÍN

GOALS:

#FOCAKitchen #FOCABeachCleanUp #FOCAMovies #FOCAPublications #FOCAPoems #FOCAFoccacia #FOCAPublicLibrary #FOCAMusic #FOCAYoga #FOCAMeditations #FOCASpiritualRetreat #FOCAWorkshops #FOCASexuality #FOCAKittens

If you want to support F.O.C.A and transmute into any of these supporters categories : Little Mermaid, Dolphin, Crab, Mussel or Plankton, please contact us at the following email: foca@foca.art