Early in the morning and late in the evening, between low and high tide, the Theatrum Algaerium rises from the sea. Metal frames hold the fluttering weeds. Glass jars fill up with seawater, their round shapes are acting like a lens and focus on the morphology of the floating algae.

Theatrum Algaerium operates on the border between sapiens and fauna. It presents possible futures in a new bio/techno/natural world, a universe that is at once terrestrial and aquatic, a prerequisite for future coexistence. In this garden of marine delights, our ecological consciousness explores the speculative time that occurs in the form of a loop. Can a human being become entangled in an erotic entwinement  with Laminaria? Do we reject or embrace the slimy substance, produced by Fucus serratus, that weaves a membrane of space-time around our bodies?  Do we experience the cooperation with organisms from the sea as transforming, regenerating, transmuting? As a possible and renewable future that meanders endlessly, drawing us into its fertile depths, revealing to us a future archaeology? Do we remain connected in a process of eternal becoming, in an energy flow of future perfection, embodying a thousand forms that lived before us? 

THEATRUM ALGAERIUM
a durational performance with the sea
(with AnneMarie Maes, Margarita Maximova, Mieke Franquet, Erland Jacobsen)

August 5 – 2021, between 8:00/10:00 & between 20:00/22:00 at Oostende beach
Inbetween the performances: expo at Pleasure Island Pavilion 
51°13’30.3″N, 2°53’48.7″E 

Project Website: https://laminaria.annemariemaes.net
Production : Stelluti
i.s.m. Pleasure Island Oostende
with the support of the Flemish Government