Photos by Jessica Maurer

Gallery 3

ALGAEIC INTENT

carolyn craig

roomsheet

ALGAEIC INTENT investigates the ways in which Algae thrive in the wreckage of capitalism (it grows in response to the excesses of agriculture and suffocates fish via depletion of oxygen) and how this can operate as a mirror/reflective distortion of our intermingled biological actions and porous relations to matter. The work intermingles breathe, sound, image and desire through diffractive echo to leak affect and challenge conventional narratives around social responsibility that isolate bodies as discrete entities that sustain the meritocracy myths of capitalism.

The work uses processes of replication, amplification and echo to explore how bodies – both human and microbial – become entangled in complex modes of exploitation characteristic of capitalist systems. Using algae as both a biological agent and symbol of ecological destruction my work draws parallels between algae blooms fueled by capitalist excess and societal marginalisation.

Sites of infection comprises three of different species algae under grow lights listening to data noise recorded at a City of Sydney artist studio as well as hate speech from the internet. These strains will grow over the course of the exhibition and then return to tanks in the studio or become photo emulsion for image making processes.

Temporal persistence is a bio-material exchange that projects performance videos over live colonies of algae in rectangular tanks on the wall. It navigates the space where bodies that are deemed polluted by societal norms – such as incarcerated people, and people with non-normative bodies – are co-mingled with algae (also seen as a pollutant) as a co-imaging agent.