Julia Lohmann made an imaginary craft a reality with the help of seaweed
By Jani Niipola on May 21, 2021
An artist is always creating something out of nothing. Julia Lohmann has taken that idea to the next level. She invented a craft of working with seaweed 12 years ago and is now creating art with this innovative technique. German-born Lohman is the professor of practice in contemporary design at Aalto University. She is also an artist and the founder of the Department of Seaweed.
Aalto University we are familiar with but what is The Department of Seaweed? According to Lohmann it is a collective and transdisciplinary platform for the exploration of seaweed as a sustainable resource. ”The Department of Seaweed is quite an informal collective of people who share the same values and the same desire to work with seaweed”, she says.
Lohmann talks about “working with seaweed” in the broadest sense. She describes working with seaweed as a metaphor of another way to be engaging with nature. A case in point, seaweed can be grown and harvested in a way that benefits the environment it grows in.
“When she said seaweed is used for food I realized that I had just imagined the craft."
Traditionally in Japan seaweed is not used as material for installations and beyond. The long story goes that during a stay in Japan Lohmann visited a local fish market. She saw the incredible amounts of colourful fish but also noticed something else. Upon seeing the plates of seaweed displayed at the market, she asked her guide what the strange material is used for. In that moment she imagined a craft of working seaweed into leather-like materials and saw clothing, furniture and more.
Lohmann’s eureka moment came when the guide said it was used as food as Japanese have done fort housands of years. “When she said seaweed is used for food I realized that I had just imagined the craft. I took some seaweed home and set about to making it real. And twelve years later, here we are.”
For Glasshouse Helsinki Julia Lohmann is presenting her pavilion Hidaka Ohmu, a Japanese sea monster. The immersive installation made its debut in the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020. Hidaka Omu is the second large-scale seaweed structure by Lohmann. The first – Oki Nakanode – she finished for Victoria and Albert Museumin London in 2013.
The current project started in January 2020 when Lohmann was asked to produce a seaweed installation for the World Economic Forum as the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum was curating an exhibition on artists who were working with nature. “Nature as their subject but also their partner, so to speak”, Lohmann clarifies.
Hidaka Omu is found on the second floor of the Glasshouse Helsinki and glimpses of it can be seen from the Aleksanterinkatu outside.
The pavilion oozes magical peacefulness but the immersive experience – yes, you can enter the seaweed creature and should take your time to sit in it– delivers even greater calmness. Seaweed as a material is a revelation: the dried seaweed is skin-like, flexible material. The emotional connection to a plant, now a material, is formed by touching it.
The connection is not an accident. In her earlier work Julia Lohmann has explored the transformation of living animals to dead animals to materials and to object. “I was exploring how our ethic of framing shifted in this process and how we would accept different things in different parts of this transformation process.”
One of the missions of the Department of Seaweed collective is to raise awareness to the sometimes-problematic human-material relationships. This can now be experienced in Glasshouse Helsinki.
Lohmann has invented the technique to work seaweed but in fact she seems to be giving seaweed a new life – both figuratively and literally. “Department of Seaweed is about finding the processes of design that are regenerative rather than exploitative. Seaweed is wonderful material to do just that. We can grow it in a way that it actually benefits its local ecosystem.”
Julia Lohmann believes that we are just learning the many possibilities of using seaweed. Maybe it can be a nutrient, maybe used like to replace leather or even plastic. The artwork is a symbol of the importance of not only respecting and preserving nature but also giving back to it.
“There are many ways we can use seaweed where we are simultaneously eliminating the side effects of say, farm run-offs and able to harness the positive effects while growing it by for example giving shelter to the sea.”
Réka Kiraly is a visual storyteller, an illustrator and a founding member of Etana Editions, an independent picture book publisher. Now Kiraly has created the first artwork inside Glasshouse Helsinki’s store on Aleksanterinkatu.
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Julia Lohmann made an imaginary craft a reality with the help of seaweed
Julia Lohmann made an imaginary craft a reality with the help of seaweed
By Jani Niipola on May 21, 2021
An artist is always creating something out of nothing. Julia Lohmann has taken that idea to the next level. She invented a craft of working with seaweed 12 years ago and is now creating art with this innovative technique. German-born Lohman is the professor of practice in contemporary design at Aalto University. She is also an artist and the founder of the Department of Seaweed.
Aalto University we are familiar with but what is The Department of Seaweed? According to Lohmann it is a collective and transdisciplinary platform for the exploration of seaweed as a sustainable resource. ”The Department of Seaweed is quite an informal collective of people who share the same values and the same desire to work with seaweed”, she says.
Lohmann talks about “working with seaweed” in the broadest sense. She describes working with seaweed as a metaphor of another way to be engaging with nature. A case in point, seaweed can be grown and harvested in a way that benefits the environment it grows in.
“When she said seaweed is used for food I realized that I had just imagined the craft."
Traditionally in Japan seaweed is not used as material for installations and beyond. The long story goes that during a stay in Japan Lohmann visited a local fish market. She saw the incredible amounts of colourful fish but also noticed something else. Upon seeing the plates of seaweed displayed at the market, she asked her guide what the strange material is used for. In that moment she imagined a craft of working seaweed into leather-like materials and saw clothing, furniture and more.
Lohmann’s eureka moment came when the guide said it was used as food as Japanese have done fort housands of years. “When she said seaweed is used for food I realized that I had just imagined the craft. I took some seaweed home and set about to making it real. And twelve years later, here we are.”
For Glasshouse Helsinki Julia Lohmann is presenting her pavilion Hidaka Ohmu, a Japanese sea monster. The immersive installation made its debut in the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2020. Hidaka Omu is the second large-scale seaweed structure by Lohmann. The first – Oki Nakanode – she finished for Victoria and Albert Museumin London in 2013.
The current project started in January 2020 when Lohmann was asked to produce a seaweed installation for the World Economic Forum as the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum was curating an exhibition on artists who were working with nature. “Nature as their subject but also their partner, so to speak”, Lohmann clarifies.
Hidaka Omu is found on the second floor of the Glasshouse Helsinki and glimpses of it can be seen from the Aleksanterinkatu outside.
The pavilion oozes magical peacefulness but the immersive experience – yes, you can enter the seaweed creature and should take your time to sit in it– delivers even greater calmness. Seaweed as a material is a revelation: the dried seaweed is skin-like, flexible material. The emotional connection to a plant, now a material, is formed by touching it.
The connection is not an accident. In her earlier work Julia Lohmann has explored the transformation of living animals to dead animals to materials and to object. “I was exploring how our ethic of framing shifted in this process and how we would accept different things in different parts of this transformation process.”
One of the missions of the Department of Seaweed collective is to raise awareness to the sometimes-problematic human-material relationships. This can now be experienced in Glasshouse Helsinki.
Lohmann has invented the technique to work seaweed but in fact she seems to be giving seaweed a new life – both figuratively and literally. “Department of Seaweed is about finding the processes of design that are regenerative rather than exploitative. Seaweed is wonderful material to do just that. We can grow it in a way that it actually benefits its local ecosystem.”
Julia Lohmann believes that we are just learning the many possibilities of using seaweed. Maybe it can be a nutrient, maybe used like to replace leather or even plastic. The artwork is a symbol of the importance of not only respecting and preserving nature but also giving back to it.
“There are many ways we can use seaweed where we are simultaneously eliminating the side effects of say, farm run-offs and able to harness the positive effects while growing it by for example giving shelter to the sea.”
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