Taking Undaria pinnatifida (wakame) as a framework for critique of the characterization of species, human and nonhuman, as “non-native” and “invasive,” scientist Danielle McHaskell, artist/writer Joe Riley, and artist Audrey Snyder explore the hydropolitical ecology of a seaweed widely used in the food industry in all of its uncontainable mobility and multiplicity. Ecologists have used the term “passenger” to characterize “nonnative” and “invasive” species as ocean habitat freeloaders. Undaria is one of two macroalgal “passenger” species included among the world’s 100 “most invasive” organisms. The fault lines between invasion and invasiveness and native and non-native are taken as points of conceptual contact for boundary work between artists and scientists in the study of Undaria’s improvisational and historical patterns of colonization. Passengers of Change references the transportation of seaweed biota in contemporary cargo ship ballast tanks as well as the photographic and phycological materials stored in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Archives. Undaria is viewed in the context of the rapid globalization of postwar shipping and in its “invasion” of foreign bioregions such as Southern California. It is cast as a passenger of change in this project’s production of both an image archive, chronicling Undaria’s history as a change agent, and a living archive, in the form of a “ballast bench” — seating that doubles as an observation tank housing an experimental study of Undaria’s growth.
Passengers of Change is part of a Getty Pacific Standard Time: Art and Science Collide partnership between UC San Diego Visual Arts and Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Embodied Pacific features projects by thirty artists working with researchers in laboratories, field sites, and archives in SoCal and the Pacific Islands, inviting immersive engagement in oceanography, Indigenous design, and critical craft through exhibitions, workshops, and programs at six interrelated venues.
We are a co-laboratory…
Joe Riley is an artist, historian, and Ph.D. candidate at UC San Diego Visual Arts in a joint environmental research program with Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His research embeds its inquiry in art practice and environmental science and critically examines an oceanic turn of contemporary art directed by interdisciplinary and multispecies networks.
Joe’s work as an artist and collaborator with the collective Futurefarmers has been exhibited at Socrates Sculpture Park, Artes Mundi 7, and Sharjah Biennale 13. Previously, he was an Ocean Fellow with TBA21-Academy and participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program. Joe holds a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and has taught at UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, Stevens Institute of Technology, and Cooper Union.
Audrey Snyder is an artist, chef, and educator based in Southern California. Her engagement in these practices finds footing in seeds, soil, and sea-life.
Audrey has toured the United States by bicycle, sailed aboard Futurefarmer's Seed Journey, and was a chef with Doug Aitken's Station to Station project. Audrey received a BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art (2013) and holds a MS degree from the Lyle Center for Regenerative Agriculture, Cal Poly Pomona. She is a collaborator with the collective Futurefarmers and alongside Joe Riley she was a current participant in the Fresh Kills Field R/D program, a fellow of the Socrates Sculpture Park Emerging Artist Fellowship (2018-19), and participant in the Interdisciplinary Art & Theory Program (2018-19). In 2019, her project CAMPAGNA/CAMPANA/CAMPO was awarded first prize from the Rural Design Lab in San Potito Sannitico, Italy.
Danielle McHaskell is a PhD candidate in Marine Biology at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where she studies invasion and community ecology. As a phycologist, she studies how non-native seaweeds Undaria pinnatifida and Sargassum horneri may impact recipient communities within rocky reef temperate ecosystems in San Diego. Her dissertation research, tentatively titled “MAMI WATA” (Multi-year Assessment of Marine Invasive and Worldwide Algae Transported Across the Pacific) seeks to understand the phenology of both seaweeds as well as the mechanism of Undaria’s introduction into new regions. She has employed methodologies based on fieldwork through scientific scuba diving and laboratory work using novel instrumentation such as the Ballast Bench. Danielle’s perspective on ecology is expansive as she seeks to engage with knowledge systems and scientific practices other than what is typically seen in academia, thus is drawn to African diasporic marine caretaking practices and water relations. This affinity is developing into research that aims to braid multiple ecological knowledge systems through a community-led effort.
Danielle started her academic journey taking community college courses at Mt. San Antonio College before transferring to California State Polytechnic University, Pomona to complete an undergraduate degree in biology with a zoology option and a master’s degree in biology. After her doctoral program, Danielle aims to pursue an academic career and continue working with a multiplicity of knowledge systems in and around temperate ecosystems by collaborating with local communities.