Seaweed
July 2021 - ongoing
.jpeg)
As part of a residency with the sustainable darkroom north I am exploring seaweed as a material for moving image - ongoing process. This thinks about more sustainable ways to make images that depict ecological subjects.
In this clip, I have sewed together various bits of kelp picked from Scarborough beach, dried and then cut into 8mm strips. These are being hand-pulled through an 8mm projector.
In this work, I am thinking about alternatives to film, and how can materiality/an objects "thing-ness" play a greater part in its meaning especially in ecological terms. As Jane Bennett says in Vibrant Matter "how found objects can become vibrant things with a certain effectivity of their own." Can anthropocentric approaches to 'eco-art' be destabilised, by a greater focus on materiality and working alongside and not with 'things'?
I am currently in the process of developing a film on kelp so watch this space....