18 years crocheting coral reefs
Marine Mayhem, Part 2 - How have we bipeds destroyed so much mightiness?
Over the Christmas holidays of 2005 –18 years ago – my twin sister and I decided to crochet a coral reef. At the time, Christine joked that if the Great Barrier Reef ever died out our crochet reef may be something to remember it by. It seemed an impossible thought back then yet the sentiment is no longer a jest as scientists now warn that if temperatures keep rising coral reefs may be wiped out in a few decades.
It is an index of human power – and in some sense our powerlessness – that the largest living thing on our planet and the first to be seen from outer space, is so threatened. The GBR occupies over 130,000 square miles – at least it used to. Since 1995 more than half its corals have been lost. How could we bipeds be a match for this much mightiness?
A perverse inverse relationship now prevails, the more real corals disappear, the more our wooly corals spawn.
2023 has been the hottest year in recorded history and with an El Nino event well underway in the Pacific ocean the coming months around the reef will be warmer still. Acutely sensitive organisms, corals begin to stress if temperatures rise by more than around 1˚C leading to the phenomena of coral bleaching. When conditions return to normal recovery is possible, but since 1998 the GBR has experienced so many bleachings there’s no longer time to bounce back. Wide-scale bleaching predicted this season may be further exacerbated by immense flooding earlier this month in Queensland inundating the sea with muck.
From the start, Christine and I imagined our project as a communal enterprise, much like the way living reefs form. Real reefs are constructed by millions of coral polyps acting together. On its own a polyp can achieve almost nothing, but collectively they can build the Great Barrier Reef. We wanted our crochet reef to also be a communal affair and invited others to participate. Since 2005 nearly 25,000 people in 52 cities and countries have contributed, including in Chicago, New York, London, Ireland, Finland, Germany, and this year in Austria, with the project standing as perhaps the largest art+science endeavor on the planet. In Austria during 2023, 2,000 people made around 30,000 coral pieces; last year in Germany 4,000 people made over 40,000 – an amount no single artist could have produced. This is art created collaboratively as a conscious retort to modernist obsessions with the mythos of individual genius.
Art and science are entangled here in a knotty complex of beauty and heartbreak with the artistry struggling to fill a void left by human greed and a seeming incapacity to do the one thing which might just save us – all working together.
I estimate between 300,000 and 400,000 hours of labor have been expended on the project, most of it done by women, who constitute more than 99% of contributors. The great feminist artist Mierle Laderman Ukeles coined the term ‘maintenance art’ to categorize the art/s of care (domestic, civic and conceptual), and to draw attention to the fact that no created ‘art’ survives without the continuing work of ‘maintenance.’ With our crochet reefs, Christine and I hope to highlight the critical role of maintenance on the great artistic canvas of planet earth. Time is running out for our cnidarian brethren, here’s to hoping 2024 will be a breakthrough year in caring about our seas.
For more about the project see crochetcoralreef.org.
:Your beau;tiful art work and your remarks suich as power and powerlessness being 2 sides of the same behavior were thought-provoking. Thank you.
Carolyn R.
Incredible! Yet so sad these may one day be the only reminder of the GBR-- shown like photo albums to our grandchildren and great grandchildren.