About

Ash Périer is currently developing a in)disciplinary Situated practice working on projects merging environmental conservation efforts, experimental art approach and local knowledges from the fields she investigates. For the past five years, her work has been focused on water ecosystems with a situated approach.

Situated practices, a concept articulated by the philosopher Donna Haraway in 1988, refer to ways of producing knowledge through actions that are grounded in specific positions and contexts, rejecting the fiction of only one neutral, universal form of knowledge. They form a political project that challenges dominant and opressive regimes and supports collective, localized, and emancipatory modes of action attentive to humans and the entangled forces of the worlds they are part of.

Collaborating with artists, researchers, encounters and coïncidences, they create objects, texts, pluri-sensorial installations and methods that take care of water ecosystems by working on the alteration of percepts and affects with a concrete positive environmental impact.
Each sensory installation aims to reach beyond the limits of the art world by investigating contexts of environmental conservation and non-academic knowledges.

The aim of each project is not to en-
courage people to become more sensitive
(a convenient catch-all phrase) 
but to make them capable 
of greater attention.

CV

Contact

Ash Périer
ashleyperier1@gmail.com
Instagram : @ash.perier

UNDERWATER (DESERTED) FOREST

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UNDERWATER (DESERTED) FOREST

installation in collab w Maxence Obein

In June 2025, I presented my end-of-year Master jury at ERG (école de recherche graphique) with an immersive proposal emerging from the field research I did in Syndey a few months before, focused on the underwater kelp forest of Malabar. The idea was to create a multisensory installation that engages sight, sound, smell, and touch—and that is capable of conveying what was experienced in the field in Sydney. I wanted to invite the public to come into contact with kelp as a material through a set of sensory experiences, and from there introduce the climate and social challenges related to it.

My intention was to say: “I went somewhere, I experienced something, and I return to bear witness to it,” through this kinetic and polysensory installation realised in collaboration with the artist Maxence Obein.

An experience through the senses above all

From the moment they entered, visitors had a choice: to begin with the immersive room or to discover the research table installed outside the space. I encouraged them to first dive into the installation, through perception, before exploring the more contextual, research documents. This trajectory allowed percepts and affects to emerge before entering into what is more in the realm of text and in-depth research.

The research table: a work in progress

Outside the room, I installed a research table. It brought together:

folders on the Kelp Forest Alliance (Scientific kelp conservation NGO with whom we worked with in Sydney)
excerpts from my logbook
important books that accompanied this research
field photographs
the two hydrophone prototypes built by Maxence Obein that we used to record underwater soundscapes
two videos: one documenting our dive and sound recording in the Malabar forest, the other showing the fire being extinguished on the last day of the fieldwork during the final ritual I experienced with locals.

This table embodied a work in progress, an attempt to give form to lived perceptions, but also to share and encounter the different forms of knowledges involved in this project.

The immersive installation in the room: a horizontal forest of percepts

With Maxence Obein, we conceived this room as a forest of percepts, a space of extended relations based on the Sydney experience. The idea was not to recreate a dive in this kelp forest (that would be futile), but to bring forth fragments of this experience, to work on its specificities and to adapt them to the architecture of the exhibition space. The installation was conceived on the basis of a series of questions:

What touched me there? What persists today in my body, in my sensory memory? What heritage follows this field work?

Sound: a moving octophony

One of the most striking elements of the Malabar forest was the sound environment. With Maxence, we captured underwater sounds using hydrophones, and he then designed an octophony: an eight-speaker spatialized system that allows sound to circulate through the room.

The sounds recorded in the kelp forest rippled from speaker to speaker, creating an impression of fluid, disorienting movement, close to that sensation of hypnosis and vertigo brought about by the swaying of the kelp.

Visual: a large moving body of water

At the center of the room, a large Plexiglas tank (2 × 3 meters, salvaged last year), raised off the ground and filled with water, in which pumps generated a gentle current, mimicking the natural movements of Malabar Bay.

Inside: freshly harvested kelp from Oostend sea coast, collected in respect of seasons and harvesting quantities, floated and gently stirred with the water. Mixed in were also the shells of dead sea urchins, carried by the currents. The presence of sea urchins was important: in Sydney and worldwide, sea urchins have become a major threat to kelp forests. One can no longer speak of one without the other. At one point during the jury, the algae were present in the tank, and during the final day, we removed them, telling ourselves that to speak of kelp is also to speak of its absence and its disappearance. Only the sea urchin shells then remained, mirroring what is happening in the kelp forests of Sydney slowly transforming into urchin deserts.

Atmosphere: mist and disturbance

We diffused a light mist in the room using a fog machine. It thickened the air, made visibility hazy, and disturbed the perception of depth a way of recalling the visual opacity experienced while diving in the kelp forest.

Olfactory: a subtle algal scent

We also attempted to introduce the smell of kelp into the space. The initial idea was to diffuse an extract through the fog, but the system proved ineffective: at 200°C in the heating chamber of the fog machine, the kelp burned, and the smell became far too strong and unpleasant. In the end, it was the natural smell of the submerged kelp that filled the room: a discreet odor, revealed only when approaching the tank. The umami juices almost developed in the mouth an unexpected sensory experience. I would have liked to go even further, to propose a taste of kelp, to cook food, in particular a Korean kelp soup, a dish I grew up with, but due to lack of time, this was not possible (maybe for next time).

Light: latex and transparency

I like to work with the architecture of the spaces I invest. On one of the large windows of the room, I installed a latex membrane, custom-made to the window, airbrushed to recreate the hues of kelp under underwater light: greens, browns, yellows… I wanted to recapture that striking moment when sunlight passes through the blades of kelp underwater and makes them glow, almost as if one were inside an egg.

This latex, textured to evoke the materiality of kelp, interacted with the natural light from the window, creating halos and shifting transparencies.

Thinking of the exhibition’s signage as part of the work

As the room was isolated within the building, we imagined a small signage-installation in the water fountain of the entrance hall dissociated from the main one, taking advantage of the intense heat of that summer week that would attract people to the water fountain.

Above the water fountain, I placed a small Plexiglas container filled with water, with a submerged hydrophone connected to a headset. While filling their water bottles, visitors could listen to the underwater sounds recorded in the Malabar Forest.

A short note invited them to discover what followed: “This is a teaser for the installation in room MPO4. Go there if you are curious.”

A zone of contact

This jury also raised a fundamental question: How can one create a work that can exist within the art world without being swallowed by its logics? And that could also exist elsewhere, in a scientific, educational, local, or activist context?

Everything started from kelp: not as a subject, but as a relational center. I did not want to make it an object of study, but a starting point for producing a sensitive, affective, interdisciplinary experience. An installation that does not seek to illustrate, but to make a relationship lived, starting from a field, a place, a kelp forest.