Seaweed Project

Some materials generated during the research and development of the project, supported by an Arts Council bursary.

Footage from Blackrock, Co. Dublin, May 2021. Reflections on narcissism and nature appreciation

Footage from Quilty, Co. Clare, June 2021. Reflections on textile industry, consumerism, vanity

Footage from Illanbaun, Achill, Co. Mayo, Sept 2021. Visit to archeological site of seaweed harvesting (including seaweed garden on the foreshore). Relfections on history, traditional aquacultural practices, domesticity and the sea, underwater gardens.

Barranagh Island, Erris, Co. Mayo. Test shoots for video concept – Building a Seaweed Garden. This concept was developed in response to research of traditional aquaculture on the Irish coasts (West and North) including kelp grids, in which rocks were placed on the foreshore in a grid for the kelp to secure their holdfast to. These grids required very little maintenance (some people turned the rocks over every year) and that seaweed was harvested regularly. I am building a seaweed garden in order to create a little more non commercial seaweed to help combate climate disaster (as seaweed is a carbon sink). It strikes me as similar to how someone might leave an area of grass wild for bees – a very small helpful act. The video work will explore the tangle of objectives and emotions behind such an act. The fear and dread that might make one look towards a small, manageable, and perhaps almost meangingless personal act, to avoid facing the global and human danger. From bursary application: I am attempting to weave our sincere appreciation of nature with our waves of compassion, guilt and horror at our environmental crises, to investigate how we process our grief, responsibility and narcissism. My work is also concerned with video’s role in commercialising and commodifying nature, human impulses to capture beautiful, natural sights in photos or videos, impulses to personify other organisms, and to publicly associate ourselves with beauty.

Barranagh Island, Erris, Co. Mayo. A sign at the tidal pool in Belmullet (by my understanding, funded and erected by a local community group) says that in the Middle Ages, people believed that the Barnacle Geese that visit Ireland from Greenland for the winter, grew out of barnacles because of how young they were when they were first seen feeding on the shores. Video reflections on time, watching the rising tides (danger/escape), looking as identity, vanity of having an eye for nature.

Barranagh Island, Erris, Co. Mayo. My grandaunt drowned in 1968 while walking her three cows home across a peat bottomed shore. Video reflections on danger, domestic and agricultural history, coastal erosion.

Barranagh Island, Erris, Co. Mayo. Seaweed lesson from a local winkle picker. Video refections on: aquacultural practices.

Barranagh Island, Erris, Co. Mayo. Attempting to build a seaweed garden. Reflections on effort and futility, meditations on natural beauties, mesmerisations of having an eye for nature, vanity, work, threat, self-observation, tradition and ceremony, craft, reverence.