Collective Polyphony Festival: Macroalgae Mobilisation

Seaweed Appreciation Society (SASi)

13 Sep–7 Oct 2023

The Seaweed Appreciation Society international/SASi has gathered a selection of artists, both local and from across the seas, who are critically engaging with the multiplicitous worlds of seaweeds in what is rapidly becoming a vast marine algae movement. The works featured in Macroalgae Mobilisation are connected through bifurcating explorations of salty action including creative collectivism, ocean queering and marine futuring.

Encompassing animation, kinetic sculpture, video art, interactive lighting, speculative technologies and more, the exhibition creates a momentum that invites future participation and gentle agitation.

Seaweed Appreciation Society international (SASi) are a mobile experimental platform dedicated to artistic research into seaweed and marine ecologies.

We host events that enhance appreciation for seaweed as a subject. Together with artists, scientists, philosophers, performers and those with a general interest in seaweed, we explore, query and celebrate interspecies conviviality between human and seaweed.

Through reading groups, residencies, talks, forages, feasts and field trips, SASi connects marine specialists with artists and creatives for open-ended conversations and collaborations.

SASi's work aims to cultivate attention to seaweed as a cultural, botanical and material actor. We explore seaweed itself, as well as its varied ecological, economic and political contexts.

Seaweed Appreciation Society, Collective Polyphony, Blindside, 2023. Photograph Sebastian Kainey. Courtesy the artists.

Onsite, Exhibition

Overview

Artists involved include: Luna Mrozik Gawler, Jess Cockerill, Rittta Ikonen and Karoline Hjorth, Scott Bluedorn, Lichen Kelp, RMIT Animation Students and Climeavore poster artist/activists

Key Dates

Exhibition Opening: 14 Sep 2023, 8am–10am

Acknowledgment

This program takes place on the land of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded - this land is stolen land. We pay respects to Wurundjeri Elders, past, present and emerging, to the Elders from other communities and to any other Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders who might encounter or participate in the program.

Biographies

Seaweed Appreciation Society (SASi)Seaweed Appreciation Society international (SASi) are a mobile experimental platform dedicated to artistic research into seaweed and marine ecologies.

Through reading groups, residencies, talks, forages, feasts and field trips, SASi connects marine specialists with artists and creatives for open-ended conversations and collaborations.

SASi's work aims to cultivate attention to seaweed as a cultural, botanical and material actor. We explore seaweed itself, as well as its varied ecological, economic and political contexts

Artists Lichen Kemp, Jess Cockerill, Luna Mrozik Gawler (Cryptogamic Alliance).