Presented by Hive Center for Contemporary Art | 1D07

“A slippery slope to slime” is how ecologists J. M. Pandolfi and J. B. Jackson describe the possible future transformation of the ocean: “from large fish and coastal gardens to a stew of bacteria, jellyfish, and tar-like algae” and neurotoxic waters that might have made the coastal zone a post-apocalyptic world. One of the toxic algae, pseudo-nitzschia, produces the domoic acid, which is a neuroexcitatory amino acid that mimics the excitatory neurotransmitter L-glutamic acid. It strongly binds to glutamate receptors in the brain where it causes nerve cells to transmit impulses continuously until the cells die, thus causing destructive neuronal depolarisation with the effect of permanent short-term memory loss in mammals.

Imagine such a future in which the ocean has become infinite waters of slimy acid, or perhaps, has become the literal “sea of oblivion” with an incomputable amount of pseudo-nitzschia. Imagine the first generation of neo-coastal people failing to escape at the beginning of the crisis. Imagine the ASP (amnesic shellfish poison) becoming one of the catalysts of all kinds of accelerationism. Or imagine the situation in which people have to rely on an extracorporeal circulation of memory; the soothing words of A.I., who whispers like an aging priestess, that spread out through your mind. Imagine it remembering all your sensory messages, all your neural action potentials, and becoming the anchor point of connection with this world in turmoil. The narrative of “Moon Shore I” begins with such a soothing tone of artificial intelligence. Beyond the language, the ever-changing CGI images and the obsolete algorithmically generated visions are more like a kind of murmuring looking back and grasping, towards a more distant future.