Ocean Portal
A group of marine biocurious humanoids and a host of multi species organisms from the southern hemisphere’s intertidal zones, come together for an online exhibition of algal materiality, deep sea sounds and salty visuals.
Through experiments with marine algae, the possibilities of long distance multispecies kin-making along our coastlines and across the seas are explored. Momentarily landlocked works transport us to rock pools and kelp forests with diverse, gentle and joyous approaches to marine art activism. Incorporating a digital future aquatic video by Jess Cockerill; photographic/sculptural work and eco - philosophical writings by Charlotte Haywood; kelp instrumentation by South African artist, Pedro Espi - Sanchis, and a Samphire process video essay by Thalia Bassim from Beirut and sculptural performance works by Lichen Kelp and Sarah Seahorse.
Fathoms
(chlorophyta / phaeophyceae / rhodophyta)
by Jess Cockerill August, 2021, Video collage
The terrestrial life form is an estranged child, who wandered so far from home that it wasn’t til they returned that they realised
their gills had grown over, their eyes adjusted to the harsh daylight.
The water felt familiar, but all they could see was a blur. They fashioned devices from glass and acrylic, trying to find their way back.
The augmentation became over-complicated: they tested pressurised capsules with shiny portholes; they tried carrying
tanks of oxygen into the deep; they designed robots to visit on their behalf.
They dragged bits and pieces of their home up to the surface, too, and looked at them under microscopes and through the
perspex walls of the aquarium. They waved from within the tank. But now, all they could see was their own reflection.
Jess Cockerill is a multimedia artist and writer whose works explore the ecstasy and tension of interspecies connections.
Jess’s background in journalism and ecology is reflected in their interdisciplinary approach to creative practice,
which spans video, animation, drawing, printmaking, installation, writing and design.
RECIPE FOR A METAPHORICAL HOLOBIONT: Across time and place; as multi-modal, multi-temporal + multi-cultural
(Holobiont: assemblage of a host and many other species living in or around it.)
by Charlotte Haywood
1-DIY DRIFTWOOD FOG HARP- what does the future hold for water scarcity and access to safe drinking water for all? An offering of a DIY driftwood fog harp- as technology and invention of survival for harvesting water from the sky, using an efficient technology of capturing fog through vertical wires, inspired by observations of pine needles collecting water through droplets.
2-5- SEE BELOW.
6- MOULDED SARCONEMA FILIFORME SEAWEED SALT TEAR COLLECTORS- of myth and fantasy, to taste and take life with a grain of seaweed salt tears.
7- RE-INVIGORATED KELP FLUTES- of ingenuity, joy and cohesion. The flute is one of the oldest musical instruments found across the seas in many cultures.
8- RE-PURPOSED CIRCULAR ECONOMICAL GLASS DEMIJOHNS of recycled glass-as vessels, containers of water and life.
9- 10 - SEE BELOW.
11- EMBEDDED KELP FLUTE LOVE SONG- ‘Lisa’s Song’ in gifted conches with hack stereo speaker appendages - of musical nostalgia made by a dry giant bull kelp (Ecklonia maxima) stipe lxilongo flute found at Kalk Bay (Cape Town), South Africa by Pedro Espi-Sanchis (see video below).
2- RE-PURPOSED 1900’S COPPER FUNNEL- as currency, technology + folly. Copper, the first metal used, is known for multiple medical uses and antimicrobial properties- pertinent in a time of growing antibiotic resistance. It holds the key to the futures dependence on conductivity and technology. An incredibly recyclable metal, there is still 2/3 of the copper produced since 1900 being used. Copper is also an important trace element found within us.
3- BEACH SAND CAST HAND FILTER- Moulded beach sand cupped hands- as filter. Sifting through our hands, our world turns from oceans to forests into sand.
4- COLLECTED PUMICE- as natural phenomena from the 2012 underwater volcano eruption named the Havre seamount in the Kermadecs, NZ. It was the largest underwater volcano eruption ever recorded broadly equivalent to the most powerful volcanic eruption in the 20th century that then drifted to Australia as a giant pumice raft twice the size of New Zealand. Each piece of pumice has its own little community attracting marine organisms, including algae, barnacles, corals, and more. These tiny travellers end up hitching a ride across the ocean, and they can help seed and replenish endangered coral systems at their ultimate destination: for many, the Great Barrier Reef.
5- TASMANIAN BULL KELP THINKING CAP- Beach cast (wrack) Tasmanian Bull Kelp (Durvillaea potatorum)- as thinking cap of multi-cultural knowledge and multi modalities. Bull Kelp has been used for over 65,000 years in Indigenous Australia. Kelp forests are foundational species creating habitat for marine species Seaweed (marine macroalgae) are versatile species that have benefits for marine health, our health and the planets
9- EDIBLE WATER BUBBLES OR CARRIERS- made via the process of spherification using the chemical reaction of the carbohydrates found in the cell walls of brown seaweed’s sodium alginate and calcium lactate- from lactic acid, a compound that cells naturally create when trying to produce energy in low oxygen conditions. How will we carry water into the future, dispersing through droplets of hope and multi-modalities? .
10- DATA INFUSED AGAR AGAR CANDY- can we taste knowledge, information and memory of the past, present and future? – When we imagine the future- it has no smell, taste, texture, emotions. Here, we can taste the gravity of Ocean Acidification’ from the past, present and future.
RECIPE FOR A METAPHORICAL HOLOBIONT: by Charlotte Haywood
CONTEMPLATION- Humans like seaweed are examples of holobionts. In reflecting on our multi modal and multicultural relationship with macro algae, the sea and all it brings forth across time and place- how do we offer back? Through interactions and platforms of reciprocity; through a lens of the oceans, seas, and entities of water as kin, caring for us and vice versa. What are the rights of the oceans to exist and thrive?
Lisa’s Song- Pedro Espi-Sanchis
Pedro Espi-Sanchis performs his song on the lxilongo flute made from the stipe of giant bull kelp or sea bamboo (Ecklonia maxima) of South Africa
seaweedvideomp4- Thalia Bassim
For this work, Thalia visited a restaurant in Batroun, on the Northern coastal seashore of Lebanon, to document how locals pickle seaweed (Samphire, an intertidal sea succulent), demonstrating how they pick, pickle, and serve the seaweed. The salad is one of the only seaweed dishes in Lebanon, and can be found in most fish restaurants around the country.
Thalia Bassim (b.1998, Beirut, Lebanon) is a visual artist based in New York and currently doing research in Beirut. Her work has been an exploration of visualizing sound into different mediums, while trying to understand the different ways a body/subject occupies a space. From making videos, to archiving material, taking photographs, writing articles, and making sculptures, Thalia is slowly gathering information to create a wider immersive experience.
SASi had the pleasure of meeting Thalia online and commissioning this video after encountering her series of Emails from Beirut with Commontable.
Portable Seaweed Library - Lichen Kelp (SASi)
Lichen: This is the first edition of the Portable Seaweed Library. It was originally dreamt up as a solo project for an electric vehicle 4WD conversion to drive myself and my seaweed book collection to remote beaches in a sustainable way. Once at the destination the library would unfold and include an extra seat to invite quiet co-contemplation, conversations and shared learning. It was a way to study my research topic in situ, with an ocean view, sand between my toes and a rack of seaweeds drying next to me as I read. I imagined one in ten beach goers would stop and ask me what it was all about, drawn in by the table of books and inviting sun umbrella and empty chair. One in twenty might join me for a quiet read, or read to me or share a seaweed story. In covid times and without the costly electric vehicle funds at my disposal, this version remains a dream for now which is also fine because the first edition has evolved and adapted as a result. The bike allows me to make the project happen more quickly, more cost effectively and even more sustainably. I may not travel as far for the moment, but ideas from other projects such as the Algalsphere have flowed through, such as the value of bringing the ocean into an urban realm, adapting to post travel times and the benefits of sharing knowledge and dreaming in a host of localised settings. The seaweed and the books provide a connecting conversation starter for shared stories that often resonate with the deeply personal and ecopolitical.
I see this as a modest work, essentially riding to the park or the seaside or even the town hall steps to read a book in the sunlight, but to expand this into a public performance based piece and to invite others in for readings and discussions around marine ecology has the potential for profound moments. It is a calm call for action - to arm ourselves with knowledge; to continue making personal connections, and to form collectives - amongst authors, artists, marine biologists and the public, so that once enough people have removed their eco-blinders when it comes to marine algae we are mobilised for positive environmental change.
The work has grown out of my background as an artist, curator and designer with a history of public and collaborative art bikes including Anek Babek; a bike I made in collaboration with Heri Dono to carry instrument playing children around Yogyakarta for the 2010 Roda Roda Soundsystem Bike Parade and a mobile bike store for my previous design label Sunday Morning Designs. It has also grown out of my desire to share the experience of learning, to share the privilege of my ever expanding seaweed reference library and to share quietly joyous acts such as the pleasure of reading and meeting people.
Pictures above by Inez Martorell; taking the bike and a small selection of books out for the first spin with the family in Royal Park, Melbourne Australia.
Other books not pictured that are included in the library; Weaving Water by Bela Rofe; With a Little Kelp from My Friends by Mat Bate; In, From & With: Exploring Collaborative Survival edited by Grace Denis The Curious World of Seaweed by Josie Iselin; Seaweed: Recipes from an Ocean of Food; Coastal Chef: Culinary art of Seaweed & Algae in the 21st Century edited by Claudine Tinellis; Seaweed Chronicles: A World at the Waters Edge by Susan Hand Shetterly.
SASi is accepting suggestions and donations for the Portable Seaweed Library, so if you have any books you can recommend or if you have a text you have written yourself or you would like to gift a book please contact SASi - lichenkemp@gmail.com
Stay tuned for Portable Seaweed Library appearances in post Melbourne lockdown, with an expanded library of Seaweed texts as well as dried seaweed samples from Mornington Peninsula, Lonsdale, Apollo Bay and beyond.
Sarah Seahorse - Suburban Longing.. and the Edible Intertidal Terrarium
Suburban longing for the ocean:
Sarah Seahorse:
I have reimagined the plants growing winter wild in my own backyard as if we were under the ocean or exploring beautiful inter-tidal rock pool environments. Unable to visit the ocean for more than 4 weeks now, day 200 and something of lockdown, everything feels extra difficult right now-like walking through sticky mangrove mud. So I am recreating my own fantasy of the ocean- the place I feel most at home, in my suburban Preston home.
Particularly under bright moonlight the Nasturtium leaves become soft corals, spiky succulents look like samphire, my curly kale, blanched in hot water becomes verdant green, like a beautiful flapping wakame.... Delicate fennel fronds look like delicate strands of hijiki, and our fancy lettuce really could be some red sea lettuce. The beautiful Red flowering gums, grown from seed in my backyard and now flowering for the first time, remind me of the magic of anemones in rock pools, the ones we would poke our fingers
into as children.
A deep and profound longing for the ocean manifests in my suburban home, from foraged plants from my own yard and random kitchen ingredients set within agar agar jelly from the ocean, upon my pink kitchen bench to transport me to a magical intertidal realm.
Edible intertidal terrarium Recipe:
Ingredients:
-2 Litres Of Water
-500ml Elderflower cordial. I had this in the back of the fridge from last years foraging on
Dja Dja Wurrung country. But you could use any other clear flavouring i.e. Lemon cordial, apple juice or lemonade
-5 tsp. of agar Agar powder
-Edible gold dust (optional)
-Edible foraged plants and flowers that are beautiful.
I’ve used: Nasturtium leaves, curly and Tuscan kale, eucalyptus flowers, Spanish moss, fennel fronds etc.
Method:
1-Pour water into pot, place on heat to bring up to boil
2- Gently sprinkle agar upon the water to bloom (soften) then stir into the water really
well, removing any lumps.
3- Bring up to the boil and gently boil for a few minutes
4- Take off the heat and stir in 1 cup of cordial
5- Allow to cool to a warm temperature, but not too much so it begins to set
6- Stir thru some edible gold dust to create a magic ‘sand’ effect
7- Pour enough agar liquid into your vessel to create 2 inches of depth
8- Arrange your ‘seaweed’ in a pleasing arrangement, working quickly so the agar doesn’t
set
9- Pop this in the fridge for approx. 15 mins to set firm
10- Warm up the remaining jelly mix. Pour the next layer of agar jelly mix on top– it must
be warm enough to melt the previous layer of jelly to ensure it sticks. I pour it over a spoon
to make a soft landing on your previous layer.
11-Add more decorative elements. I swirled in some edible gold dust to create little sand
blooms.
12- Refrigerate to set
13- you can do as many layers as you wish.
Enjoy!
