Weedweavers

New Emergences was invited by AND Festival in the UK to curate a programme where two Netherlands-based artists collaborate with artists and scientists from the Liverpool area.

AND Festival 2021

Thursday 27 May – Sunday 11 July 2021
Birkenhead – Ellesmere Port – Liverpool – Online

We proudly present: Weedweavers

Two gatherings and a live event led by Angeliki Diakrousi and mariëlle verdijk.

Both Diakrousi and verdijk live and work in Rotterdam, a major port city like Liverpool, and their project is fed by the ways in which the two ports interrelate. Taking inspiration from cutting edge research into algae forms conducted by a band of formidable women in Liverpool in the early 20th Century, Weedweavers explores feminist and non-traditional science practices, myths, recipes and stories of ports and organisms like algae through a narratial workshop programme, culminating in a live broadcast. 

The title Weedweavers was inspired by mariëlle verdijk’s speculative story Descendance, about a kind of mermaid people called Whi’eeds that merge their bodies once underwater. In that story, the song of the Diatoms goes:

Go go go to the middle of the earth
where footsteps are few
whiiee whieeve wheeve weave
weave the worlds
the words
of the old weeds
of the old seeds
of the old tales
whi’eeeeds,
weave new worlds out of old tales

Speculative stories have the power of imagining different futures. Positive, collaborative futures. This genre enables to develop a new language, another way of talking together. The words ‘weed’ and ‘weave’ both start with ‘we’. (mariëlle verdijk)

Angeliki Diakrousi is brewing a Weedweavers world, in the online virtual environment Gather.town offered by the AND festival, where you can join and travel from the surface of the big harbour ships to the deep level of underwater togetherness.

Deeper (talk): Thursday 17th June  20:00 – 20:40 CET

Gathering 1: Friday 18th June (online) 19:00 – 21:00 CET

Gathering 2: Friday 25th June (online) 19:00 – 21:00 CET

Live Event: Friday 9th July (online) 21:00 – 22:00 CET

Find the more info about the talk on June 17 here.
Tickets for the Gatherings are free, but capacity is limited, so please book here.
For the event on the 9th of July no booking is needed, info is here.

As Weedweavers we will travel from the surface of the big harbour ships to the deep level of underwater togetherness. We will listen to the narratives of the sea and the ports from different perspectives. What is the role of tactility when scientists investigate the structure of the algae? How do shell collectors remember the bottom of the sea? When do workers of the sea talk about sea creatures, and how? How do myths suggest forms of organising together? ( the artists)


June 17, watch a live discussion with Luke Moody, Creative Director of AND, Semay Wu and Mariëtte Groot of New Emergences, mariëlle, and Angeliki.

In the first Gathering we have as special guest Geraldine Reid, who wrote the paper “From the Shore to the Sublittoral – Liverpool’s Algal Women”. She is Lead Curator of Botany, Geology & Science, World Museum Liverpool. You can read her article on one of those “Algal Women” here. Also in that first Gathering, meet Andrea Ku, a Liverpool-based artist, gardener and beekeeper.

In the second Gathering, Emma Marsh, an archaeologist who has done a research (and intervention) on the port of Liverpool, will join us together with Andrea Ku. In our trip we have also invited to weave with us Gabrielle Barros Martins, a performer and therapist working with the breath.

An important role for the visual aspects of all our weaving and wandering will be filled by Laura Spark, a visual artist working in animation, film and performance.

The LIVE performance will be an hour-long live improvisation using the materials from the past Gatherings. Introducing the idea of an algaerithm, Laura, Angeliki and mariëlle collaborate in creating a live algal oracle in which they weave soundbites, spoken word and visuals into an ambiguous, emergent and intuitive narrative.  

Tune into andfestival.org.uk/live to experience the performance on Friday 9 July.
The recording of the performance will be available to watch online until Sunday 11 July.

Angeliki Diakrousi

Angeliki Diakrousi examines the dynamics of public realms and cultural politics of listening. She is engaged with collective speech platforms and listening channels, online broadcasting, feminist approaches on technology, reconsiderations of public spaces, dialogical and relational methodologies, critical computing and open source practices. She studied Architecture in the University of Patras in Greece and she realised the Experimental Publishing Master at Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam, with a scholarship from the Onassis Foundation. After her studies she joined Varia, a space for developing collective approaches to everyday technology in Rotterdam.



mariëlle verdijk

With a background in scenography and cultural science, mariëlle verdijk mainly works as performer, cook and cheese seller. To train her un-becoming as individual, she is an active member of TRICKSTER, a performance collective with a focus on instant collaboration, intuition and not (yet) knowing. She and her partner also practice neighbourism through opening the doors of their ook_huis (also_house) for anyone in need of space. Recently mariëlle has begun writing speculative fiction in the hope of making a modest contribution to our collective thinking about other, also_possible futures.


*** Home page Image (microscope lady): Mary Winifred Parke (born in Liverpool in 1908). Marine botanist and one of the key figures in the groundbreaking research into algae mentioned above.