https://www.unctuousbetweenfingers.co.uk

Website, 2022

Unctuous Between Fingers is a creative research project that poses the question, what can we learn from seaweed? 

Initially commissioned as a moving image work for the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in 2019, I received funding from Arts Council England (2021-22) to open and extend the project to develop further research in the form of an online platform. This included developing educational resources, online reading groups, a podcast (commissioned by Caraboo Projects), a permanent (online) home for the moving image work and a series of commissioned texts and artworks from my project collaborators.

In this second phase, Unctuous Between Fingers unfurled its tentacles (or fronds) to make touch on seaweed’s relationship to gender, indigenous knowledge cultures, colonial cooptation and the politics of naming. This endeavour is both critical and optimistic about seaweed’s importance in the climate emergency — celebrating it’s life giving and science fictional qualities, but also recognising the ease with which late capitalism has coopted seaweed as a bandaid under which to continue processes of extraction and oppression.

Commissioned texts/works from: Maria Christoforidou, Belladonna Paloma, Sarah Hotchkiss, Frankie Dytor, Melody Jue, Kayle Brandon.

The website is intended as a resource — a living repository of seaweed thinking. The contributions included are varied in tone and form, considering many different positions, perspectives and interpretations of seaweed. We hope that these resources, histories, stories and artworks open the door to your own seaweed journey and provoke some questions about possible seaweed futures, ecologies and symbiotic care.