MUR 017 | FIONA AMUNDSEN || LISTENING TO SEAWEED
For half a century, from 1946 to 1996, over 300 nuclear weapons tests were conducted by Britain, France, and the United States across unceded regions of Moana-Oceania. These tests dispersed hazardous levels of ionising radiation into the oceanic environment, contaminating lands, waters, and communities. This project by Fiona Amundsen responds to that enduring legacy—one that is ecological, political, and deeply ancestral.
Listening to Seaweed unfolds as a visual and sonic investigation into marine ecologies affected by nuclear contamination and militarisation. At its core is seaweed—an organism that bioaccumulates radioactive substances and metabolises histories often rendered invisible. Amundsen asks what it means to attend to seaweed as a witness, as a memory-keeper, and as an ancestral form of knowledge. What might these organisms have absorbed, seen, and communicated across oceanic time since the inception of Cold War testing?
Developed along Ishigaki’s Ōura River and the Port of Ibaruma during asa seaweed season, the project draws from photography, filmmaking, and storytelling to trace fragile, entangled relations between nuclear violence and marine life. It is less an act of documentation than of attunement—an attempt to ethically connect with the afterlives of contamination by listening to more-than-human voices.
Amundsen’s practice critically repositions the archive—not as a site of state power, but as a living, oceanic memory that continues to evolve beneath the surface. In doing so, Listening to Seaweed offers a method for sensing radioactive time and imagining post-nuclear futures grounded in ecological care, Pacific resistance, and reciprocal listening.
During her time at MA Umi Residencies, Fiona explored the daily arrival of coastal seaweed along the shores of Ibaruma and Shiraho. Working with both edible asa and various forms of seagrass, her process combined analogue photography with ecological experimentation. Using a handmade pinhole camera, Amundsen recorded the seaweed in situ, then developed the film using a seaweed-based solution she prepared herself.
This alternative, site-responsive technique—marked by minimal chemical intervention—produced remarkably rich visual results. Especially striking were the images rendered from sponge seagrass, which revealed delicate textural imprints shaped by the tidal rhythms and microclimates of the island’s coast. The process not only foregrounded seaweed as subject and medium, but also proposed a slower, more reciprocal mode of imaging attuned to marine temporalities.
Fiona Amundsen is an artist and researcher based in Aotearoa New Zealand. Working across photography, moving image, and oral histories, her practice explores the ethics of witnessing in relation to militarisation, colonial violence, and nuclear legacies across the Pacific and Asia. Amundsen's work focuses on collaborative storytelling, often engaging with communities and sites marked by geopolitical trauma.
Her recent projects examine the ecological and cultural aftermath of Cold War nuclear testing in Moana-Oceania and the entangled roles of memory, survival, and resilience. She is Associate Professor at the School of Art and Design, Auckland University of Technology, and her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Honolulu Biennial, Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, and the Adam Art Gallery, Wellington.