A CONSTELLATION OF TINY CREATURES, THE MILKY WAY OF THE OCEAN (EMILIANIA HUXLEYI)

Emiliania Huxleyi is the most abundant type of coccolithophore (a single-celled calcifying phytoplankton) in our oceans. Its calcium carbonate shells form chalk. By staging this encounter between a technological, highly ‘engineered’ entity and the seeminlgy simple organisms, I wanted to raise questions around ideas of progress and intelligence in relation to evolution.

The film shows remnants of the encounter itself as recorded by the machine, whilst the prints reveal geological traces of the two entities together discovered via microscope at a future time. By simultaneously displaying two time periods hundreds of millions of years apart (the one in which the chalk was formed, and the one in which the chalk was extracted) the installation questions notions of time, productivity and progress.