"I had never been in Iceland before. Arriving to a warm sunny Reykjavík, I dragged my immense
suitcase up the hill past the looming hexagonal shadows of Hallsgrimskirkjan and onwards to a
pub called Brewdog and a woman called Emmy. Finally there, I get a beer in my hand, “Welcome
to Iceland.” I was in Reykjavik for no more than two days and then I was transported north,
towards this mystical place called Blönduós: a small town with no bigger significance than being
the speedbump on your way north towards bigger and better things. But nestled in this grey and
insignificant town, there is an amazing little self-sustaining Mecca of 3D printers, laser cutters,
TC2, knitterates, tufting guns, wool, mycelium, bacteria that can dye fabric and seaweed, loads
and loads of seaweed.
During the past seven months I have been researching the brown kelp that I forage on the local
beach of Blönduós. This research has brought me on a journey trying to understand the macro
and micro ecosystems of kelp, the fabrication methods of seaweed-based biomaterials and the
intricate and at times distanced relationship humans have towards seaweed. The journey
culminated in the project Seaweed Dialogues which attempts to reconnect humans with seaweed
through a sensorial and haptic dialogue speculating on what seaweed is and can be."
what the archive is about
The Living Archive explores the potential of (post)industrial heritage to transform production in our cities. We collect stories with participatory heritage methods. The nodes for the local collection efforts are Fab City Hubs (FCH). The collection has been carefully assembled by FCH teams who have been learning about, co-creating and applying participatory heritage-making approaches, emotion networking methodology, oral history principles and creative perspective-taking. Select tags and categories to filter stories in the archive below. Explore their connections in the network graph.
