Meeting The Lough On Its Own Terms
Ami Clarke


opening night :19th Feb 6-9pm at Banner Repeater
kindly supported by Arts Council England

 

 

'Meeting The Lough On Its Own Terms' is an exhibition, talks and workshops programme by artist Ami Clarke, in partnership with  Friends of the Earth, Digital Art Studios, Sonic Arts Research Centre and PS² (Belfast), and Banner Repeater (London)

 

In the long hot summer of 2023, Lough Neagh, the largest body of water in Ireland and the UK, became overwhelmed with algae blooms to such an extent that the vibrant green images of the blue green algae went viral, making international headlines. Two years on, the Lough was overwhelmed with algae blooms again this summer (Tommy Greene The Guardian). Once a site of great abundance, supplying (as it still does) 40% of all drinking water to NI, with eel fishing famously being passed down across generations over centuries, the complexity of how the Lough became eutrophic presents a textbook case in converging dynamics of power, influence, and conflicts of interest, that have also developed over decades, if not centuries, around Lough Neagh and the watershed.

The microbial scale of the cyanobacteria (blue green algae) is important in allowing us to cut through the complexity, drawing our attention to certain indisputable material facts that show that there is simply too much phosphorous in Lough Neagh, at which point we can start to dismantle everything that makes it this way. 

 

SYSTEMS COLLAPSE

 

Algae blooms offer a symptom of the climate crisis that emphasises the interconnectedness of vulnerable ecosystems with human-made systems.

 

Cyanobacteria, so deeply entangled with the story of evolutionary biology, offer a glimpse of a very particular world view of the time, based upon mechanistic science, that saw nature as separate to humans, and, as such, a resource to be extracted from. Whilst the Neo-Darwinists chose to emphasise ideas of competition and survival of the fittest, the evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis’ work on microbial life developed an understanding that collaboration and cross-species alliances had as much to do with evolution as DNA. The deep resistance shown towards Margulis’ research, now accepted universally, was no coincidence, with the emphasis on ‘the individual’ writ large in ideas of the ‘selfish gene’, that characterised both Neo-Darwinism and Neo-Liberalism, also emerging at that time.

 

Margulis’ work shows that algae blooms also speak of deep, geological, planetary timescales, as cyanobacteria brought oxygen to the atmosphere at a crucial stage in evolution 3.4 billion years ago, bringing about mass speciation and eventually humans.

 

Our focus on the microbial scale has the potential to lead to a paradigm shift in thinking; a gut feeling, even, as we start to understand our relationship to nature from a more de-centred perspective, as just one species amongst the multitudes that live within the vulnerable eco-system of Lough Neagh, vital to finding a more sustainable equilibrium.

Whilst the project responds to the ecological disaster at Lough Neagh, it speaks to deeply entrenched larger environmental issues shared across the UK.

 

 

More details:

 

Artist Ami Clarke has been in conversation with Friends of the Earth NI and associates for two years working on a multi disciplinary art project: 'Meeting The Lough On Its Own Terms' that emphasises a multi-species approach from a microbial scale.  Partnering with: Friends of the Earth, PS2 gallery, Digital Arts Studios Belfast, and Sonic Arts Research Unit QUB, the project includes a multimedia exhibition informed by collective writing workshops with FotE, research with DAS XR Group and Sonic Ritual workshops with John D'Arcy HIVE choir SARC. The work brings together the multiple scales and temporalities of the lough, combining 4K drone footage, cinematography and underwater filming, with microscopic video at a microbial scale, with research and development kindly supported by scientists working on the Lough for several decades. The work was exhibited at PS2 Gallery August-September 2025, kindly supported by Belfast City Council, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and Friends of the Earth, Northern Ireland.

​