I am looking at a lifeless rocky island

where there are no people

and no deer

no hares

snakes

worms

lichens

algae

bacteria?

Where do we draw the line of lifelessness?

This project began while I was still working on "we used to be seaweed" and it was shaped by the contrast between two landscapes: the desert of the Aral Sea and the Northern Irish seashore. Standing on the Irish coast, surrounded by what seemed like an abundance of water and sea life, I participated in the Big Seaweed Search, a citizen science project led by the Natural History Museum. This effort - trying to think about the arid place being in a very wet environment - made me realize that even in seemingly thriving environments, substantial ecological shifts are occurring.

This tension between feeling the ecological crisis simultaneously distant, unimaginable and immediate, tangible, made me remember the phrase by Lawrence Buell, "The ecological crisis is the crisis of imagination." This project seeks to bridge these imaginings, blending the memory of abundance with the reality of scarcity.

These are actual imprints of something that doesn't exist - an imagined, non-existent form, both organic and geological. It captures the essence of what might have been—a memory or a trace of a once-thriving ecosystem—while highlighting the fragmented nature of our connection to the natural world.

This is a reflection on nature's capacity for transformation and the human role in shaping and preserving its memory, existence and absence, and the beauty hidden in what remains.