Seaweed grows abundantly across Asia and it has historical, cultural and culinary significance. Recently, it has been suggested that seaweed is a potential solution to climate change through its sequestering of blue carbon and as a renewable material used across the food chain. Seaweed Stories invites artists, farmers, marine biologists, historians, chefs, and publics across Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, and Australia to collectively think, gather, and practice ‘with’ seaweed and with each other through a series of discussions, workshops, and satellite displays. It is a project that brings communities together, and seeks to find our common story now and into the future.

Through Gathering With Seaweed an event held on Wednesday 26th February 2025 we hear from four distinct creative practitioners who have been part of the project: Jessie French, Ari Bayuaji, We+ Studio and Manola-Gayatri Kumarswamy and Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar of Edible Archives. We gather with seaweed across oceans to learn about ways of attuning to underwater ecologies by making, eating, designing and collaborating with seaweed, kelps and marine algaes.

Through this research we are asking how can art and seaweed bring people together in times of climate crisis? How can we trace interregional connections through seaweeds and sea plants? How can we design with seaweed in ways that resist extractive logics of monocultural, terrestrial farming practices? How can we attune to the issues that sea-plants and seaweeds face as the ocean warms?

Collaborators

Jessie French (Australia),  Ari Bayuaji (Indonesia),  Anumitra Ghosh Dashtar of Edible Archives  with Manola Gayatri (India), we+ (Tokyo) and Rice Brewing Sisters participated in an online think tank in May of 2024. A podcast led by Bianca Winataputri will launch in March of  2025.

The project was initiated by Bianca Winataputri and supported by curatorial researcher Madeleine Collie.