Kelps are organized into marine forests, as they can grow up to 30 metres in length, making them the most extensive marine vegetation ecosystem in the world. But kelps also have a life cycle. They die, and the same ocean currents that fed them now drag them along, enveloping and entangling them with other organisms or elements that dance within that ebb and flow. Plastics also intermingle until they end up as a whole on the coast.
KELP
The term kelp is commonly used to refer to more than 100 species of large brown algae that constitute one of the most productive and diverse habitats on the planet. Despite their appearance as large marine plants, they do not belong to the kingdom of plants and green algae but are classified in the kingdom Protista (they are neither animals, algae, nor fungi). They provide one of the richest habitats on the planet, but they have also been vital to indigenous and coastal peoples who have used them for generations as medicine, food and material.
Kelps are organized into marine forests, as they can grow up to 30 metres in length, making them the most extensive marine vegetation ecosystem in the world. But kelps also have a life cycle. They die, and the same ocean currents that fed them now drag them along, enveloping and entangling them with other organisms or elements that dance within that ebb and flow. Plastics also intermingle until they end up as a whole on the coast. There is a journey after death and a new condition. New forms and new elements are created. The slender bodies of kelp create unusual shapes in the sand along with other natural and artificial wastes, becoming one. Out of context, there is a materiality that kelp has, a materiality as physical and symbolic objects. These objects become territorialised and inserted into a field of previously unimaginable meanings, transcending the limits of their own materiality. Their new bodies resurrect them through the creative capacity of waste, whether physical, artistic or symbolic. Finally, through their representation, they are promised a new life within new forests and, ultimately, a new mysterious existence.