Seaweed as Meditation: First Light 2019_12_15

Along the morning tideline, artists, activists and enthusiasts will lead a series of listening and movement actions, in a seaweed-centric exploration of the space between plants and algae, performance and the everyday, the sacred and the profane, human and non-human, sound and silence, stillness and flow, land and water.

Artist JAYE CARCARY will guide attendees on an experiential journey through states of aquatic being, sensitising us to the presence of seaweed as a collaborator and companion, with a meditation ritual welcoming the first light.

LIBBY HARWARD, who is a Ngugi woman from the Quandamooka, will lead a bodywork exercise on attuning to material and immaterial presence in interspecies communication with the tides.

Gold Coast clean beaches activist JENNIFER SCHULTZ will lead a shoreline forage, in which we will explore seaweed and shell identification, and undertake a collective litterpicking excursion to Tallebudgera and back.

MICHAEL PHILP, who is an indigenous artist from the Tweed Caldera, will join us to share some thoughts and reflections on place, plants, seaweed, animals, culture and people in saltwater country.

This session will be led by Seaweed Society’s DANNI ZUVELA, and will be accompanied with sights, sounds, tastes, coastal comparisons and other reports from the recent INTERNATIONAL KELP CONGRESS, in beautiful Lofoten, Northern Norway, combined with cultural memories and local knowledge.