Algues Maudites, a Sea of Tears

Algues Maudites, a Sea of Tears – The proliferation of green algae on Brittany’s coasts has become a major environmental issue. For many years now, these “cursed algae” have been invading the coastline. Alice Pallot integrates the notion of anticipation into the photographic medium by capturing a natural phenomenon: the reality of anoxic environments, in which we could not survive as human beings, and imbuing them with a science-fiction imagination. By playing on the elements of uncertainty that accompany the anticipation of a near future, he gives the spectator the keys to the reading to invest in the essential questioning of the preservation of ecosystems in the face of its exploitation and the imminent decline of biodiversity.

A powerful text by Michel Poivert accompanies Alice Pallot’s anticipatory images. He takes the voice of an AI in 2056 and describes an ecoscopic fable in the future. Here’s an extract:
“The vector of this regeneration of photography has been the interest aroused in new representations of the living in the damaged world of the Anthropocene. Some embryonic theories have spoken of biophoto or living photography involving hybridizations between bacteria and photographic emulsion, thus observing the phenomena of bio-construction of representations. The radical decentering brought about by deanthropization has made it possible to consider these representations as concretely universal. The example of Alice Pallot’s work, and in particular Algues Maudites, a Sea of Tears, an analysis of the eutrophication of marine coasts, was particularly noted in the early 2020s. The unconsented fertilization of marine waters and the proliferation of “ulvae” was the starting point for militant research denouncing a practice born of over-consumption and pollution. The paradox at work is that this biological disruption is achieved through the proliferation of vegetation, which is also desired, as in the reforestation efforts. This “green dialectic” has been the subject of much debate.”