Algae Worlds

Heather Davis argues that the Anthropocene is primarily a sensorial phenomenon: the experience of living in an increasingly diminished and toxic world in Art in the Anthropocene (Davis 3). As we grapple with multiple crises and species loss, the need for thinking beyond anthropocentrism is becoming increasingly apparent. In The Life of Plants, Emmanuel Cocia writes about the creation of our atmosphere as the result of a catastrophe of pollution, or the Great Oxygenation Event or the Oxygen Catastrophe.” (Coccia 27). Algae and cyanobacteria were the first life forms on Earth. Microalgae are among the most efficient photosynthetic organisms for carbon capture and high biomass productivity. These organisms were the first ones capable of photosynthesis. They were initially responsible for the Great Oxygenation An event that caused oxygen to exist in free form in the atmosphere hence benefiting aerobic forms of life. They created the atmosphere and made life possible. I try to find how past catastrophes can inform or alter a current one. What kind of interventions can artists and thinkers do to remember our relationship with these cyanobacteria? Is it possible to re-oxygenate the atmosphere by collaborating with cyanobacteria to make polluted cities livable again?

 
Living in one of the world's most populated and polluted cities, New Delhi, India, made me think about “breath” or prana on a physical, philosophical, and speculative level. I left the city I was born in because I could no longer breathe freely. The worsening Air Quality Index (AQI) also worsened my anxiety about what my child was breathing. The quality of air I breathe has always been a cause of concern to me since I developed bronchitis when I was 14 years of age. An infographic in Forbes magazine in 2019 coloured all of India red, signifying hazardous air. In Toronto, where the AQI is four on most days (unless it is forest fire season), to understand the reasons why a country with the worst carbon footprint in the world was less polluted. If one tallies products sold in Toronto, it’s easy to observe that most things are imported and manufactured from the eastern part of the globe like India, China, Bangladesh etc. I speculate about the price paid by local populations of those “far away” places regarding their vital materialities (Bennet, 18).

 
In my climate exile in Canada, a quandary is the indoor air quality inside homes in Toronto. The “inside” is maintained very differently from the outside. The weather is brutal on the northern front. Large infrastructures of atmospheric control are installed to maintain the "inside” to be habitable temperature. According to statistics from an E.P.A.-funded study conducted in 2001, we spend 90% of our time indoors in North America and sometimes the indoor air is much worse than the outside. The panopticon living of the cities propagates this divide between the “inside” and the “outside.” 

I chanced upon algae as a new architecturalsolution to recovering indoor air.[1] Goingdeeper into my inquiry into how nature is not a mother, I investigated theiterative, symbiotic species of -algaeand how to make kin with these 4-billion-year-old organisms so as to be able tobreathe better and make art. The independent study I did over the summer of 2023 explored whetherif algae can be integrated into my artpractice through art objects, offering beauty and respite from everyday life.It also made me think critically about the generative powers of working withmore than humans. Since then, I have explored ways of making algae accessible,simplifying their maintenance and, in a workshop, encouraging undergradstudents to grow their own cultures. Read more in the chapter Breathing with algae in my MFA thesis.