Early in the morning and late in the evening, between low and high tide, the Theatrum Algaerium rises from the sea. Metal frames hold the fluttering weeds. Glass jars fill up with seawater, their round shapes are acting like a lens and focus on the morphology of the floating algae.
A durational performance with the sea, Annemarie Maes’ Theatrum Algaerium rises from the waves. Metal frames hold fluttering weeds and algae-carrying jars filling up with tidal water create ‘narratives woven from the threads of past, present and future’, while a team of performers prepares and offers ocean delicacies. ‘The waves threaten to swallow up the lab’, the Belgian bio artist notes about the Oostende seaside ritual, ‘but in a repetitive action, structures, algae and jars are carried past the flood line’.
photocredits: vandenbussche-vandenbossche.com
Theatrum Algaerium operates on the border between sapiens and fauna. It presents possible futures in a new bio/techno/natural world, a universe that is at once terrestrial and aquatic, a prerequisite for future coexistence. In this garden of marine delights, our ecological consciousness explores the speculative time that occurs in the form of a loop. Can a human being become entangled in an erotic entwinement with Laminaria? Do we reject or embrace the slimy substance, produced by Fucus serratus, that weaves a membrane of space-time around our bodies? Do we experience the cooperation with organisms from the sea as transforming, regenerating, transmuting? As a possible and renewable future that meanders endlessly, drawing us into its fertile depths, revealing to us a future archaeology? Do we remain connected in a process of eternal becoming, in an energy flow of future perfection, embodying a thousand forms that lived before us?
Early in the morning and late in the evening, between low and high tide, the Theatrum Algarium rises from the sea. Metal frames hold the fluttering weeds. Glass jars fill up with seawater, their round shapes are acting like a lens and focus on the morphology of the floating algae.
Theatrum Algarium works with organisms of the sea. In an associative way, we meander through the algarium and create a narrative that is woven from the threads of past, present and future. In their lab performers prepare bits & bites from the sea. These delicacies are offered to the visitors and passers-by in petri dishes. The waves threaten to swallow up the lab, but in a repetitive action, structures, algae and jars are carried past the flood line and end up in the cabin of Pleasure Island. There, the Theatrum Algarium finds a home for the day, and the Laminaria website+archive can also be visited.
Vroeg in de ochtend en laat op de avond, tussen eb en vloed, stijgt het Theatrum Algaerium op uit de zee. Metalen staketsels vormen een houvast voor wapperende wieren. Glazen bokalen vullen zich met zeewater, hun ronde vormen werken als een lens en focussen op de morfologie van de zwevende algen.
Theatrum Algaerium werkt samen met organismen uit de zee. Op een associatieve manier meanderen we door het algarium en creëren we een narratief dat geweven is uit de draden van verleden, heden en toekomst. Aan een laboratorium tafel prepareren performers bits & bites uit de zee. Deze kostbaarheden worden in petri schaaltjes aan de bezoekers en voorbijgangers aangeboden. De golven dreigen het laboratorium te overspoelen, maar in een repetitieve handeling worden structuren, algen en bokalen voorbij de vloedlijn gedragen, om te eindigen in de cabine van Pleasure Island. Daar vindt het Theatrum Algarium een onderkomen voor de dag, en kan ook de website+archief Laminaria bezocht worden.
_______________THEATRUM ALGAERIUM
a durational performance with the sea _____
combining science, fiction and art
with AnneMarie Maes, Margarita Maximova, Mieke Franquet, Erland Jacobsen, Luc Steels
August 5 – 2021, between 8:00/10:00 & between 20:00/22:00 at Oostende beach
Inbetween the performances: expo at Pleasure Island Pavilion
51°13’30.3″N, 2°53’48.7″E
Project Website: https://laminaria.annemariemaes.net
Production : Studio Stelluti
i.s.m. Pleasure Island Oostende
with the support of the Flemish Government
AnnaLuyten_Symbiose