Installation by Gilles Aubry comprising elements of agar, copper and textiles.
The work allude to the sea as an environment whose ‘nature’ is made of pollution particles and algorithms. The work is part of an on-going body of collaborative research on the Moroccan Atlantic coast. Aubry digs into the significance of seaweed in the region as a resource for industries to harvest, and a material around which social and cultural life revolves for local communities in Sidi Bouzid. Together with a number of interlocutors, Aubry collectively attempts to “listen” to seaweed and pollution on the Atlantic coast.
The installation was conceived for the exhibition Notes from below at ACUD gallery in Berlin. It is presented alongside two videos by Aubry. The film Atlantic Ragagar is poetically attuned to coastal ecology in the Safi area, and the consequences of industrial pollution for the environment and the health of the population. In The Binding Effect, we enter into a conversation with a group of local women who collect seaweed for a living, as they talk about labour, marine life and pollution. In a cooking workshop we see how they use agar for baking jelly sweets. Here we glimpse into the importance of seaweed to their everyday lives and how the industrialised harvesting has affected their conditions of working.
Exhibition Notes from below curated by Bhavisha Panchia
May 11 to June 10 2023
ACUD MACHT NEU / ACUD Galerie
Veteranenstraße 21, 10119 Berlin
https://acudmachtneu.de
Photo documentation by Camille Blake
