Peter Fend by Inga Haveland Mannsåker

Peter Fend

Peter Fend is born in 1950, in Ohio, USA, but is now living and working in New York. In 1980 his office, consisted of five artists, founded a organisation called

Earth Development Corporation (OCEAN EARTH). This organisation was built up on the ideas of the environmental art movement, largely based on the work of Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Smithson and Joseph Beuys.

The organisation works in collaboration with scientists, in order to initiate a discussion and reorganize strategies involving the ocean space as something else rather than merely political borders.

The group use artistic language an mediums to communicate experimental ideas, which they convey to lead to faster real life solutions.

Photo of Peter Fend

Chosen Works

Jamaica Bay

“We have always been facing a collision with nature, and against each other, it is time to work together with our surroundings”. - Peter Fend

In 2012, following the storm Sandy that hit New York Oktober 2012, scientist and politicians announced that the city had only one year brace it self before the next storm.

Peter Fend had been working on several proposals to start harvesting and using seaweed as a renewable resource, to prevent future electrical blackouts. For many years his artistic/scientific works had only been published by academically-credentialed journals and his work did not lead to a further discussion or towards any real life action.

The situation for one of his project was Jamaica Bay, located south of New York City´s JFK Airport. Fend claims that the natural circulation of saltwater has stopped, due to a newly established runway in the bay.

To visualise how the circulation of saltwater once appeared, Fend built a physical model of daily flowing saltwater, as well as a drawing of a biger scale. The drawing showed that seawater was flowing from Labrador Current, that gets its sources in Greenland, and reaches Jamaica Bay through Hudson’s Bay and the Great Lakes.

If the circulation on seawater could be reestablished, a production of seaweed and algae could start blooming. The seaweed will work as a buffer to turbulence, and the algae can be harvested and used as fuel by the airport.

ALGAE AS RENEWABLE RESOURCES

Algae grow in almost every type of water. Oceans, lakes, ponds, rivers and even in polluted water. There are three types of algae, Rhodophyta (red algae), Phaeophyta (brown algae) and Chlorophyta (green algae). They are also classified by size as

Macroalgae (multicellular) and microalgae (single cellular). Macroalgae, better known as seaweed, is visible to the naked eye, while microalgae are small organisms, only visible in larger groups.

Algae produces different substances that can be useful for us. One of these substances are oils, which can be utilized in biofuels, health supplements, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.

Microalgae was first suggested as a biofuel in the 1960s, and received attention from US Nation Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), in the 1980s. The establishing of algae farms for production of energy, is now a growing field, and might be one of the solutions to the global climate crisis.

Microalgae has properties suited for cleaning wastewater and atmospheric CO2 mitigation. Through the use of photosynthesis they utilize carbon dioxide to produce oxygen, which make up 50% of the globeal atmospheric oxygen.

Microalgae uses sunlight, carbon dioxide and

nutrients alone to produce lipid and other by-products, which they yield all year long.

Because the algae captures solar light that are

already in the solar circle, it will not add to the heat load of the planet when the substance is being released. The biomass the algae create can be transformed into biofuel through terminal,

chemical or biochemical methods, and provide a renewable resource.

There is not a need to set aside space on land for the production, since the algae is capable of growing in every kind of water. This is because of it’s simple structure as single cellular organisms, which is also the reason why they easily capture solar light.

Algae have a stable production all year long, which makes them very efficient compared to other farming crops. Studies show that algae can yield up to 10 000 gal/ace of biofuel a year, while corn, for example, yield only 60 gal/ace.

The substance microalgae produces for biodiesel industry has 15-300 times the yeild compared to traditional crops in the same area and it is also non toxic.

Compared to other renewable resources like solar, geothermal, wind, tidal energy, and so on, seaweed is easier to take control of and it is more stable. It grows also 50 times faster than the fastest growing terrestrial crop.

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Methods

Peter Fend reconstructs and analyses the world focusing on the ocean.

“to liberate the world we must look at the ocean and work with it, not against it.” - Peter Fend

His art is made with mediums like maps, satellite images, movies, models and installation. He uses scientific information, in a conscious straining and specific way, while making abstract and spatial art. This creates a kind of tension. He intends to push his art beyond aesthetics engagement, instead prioritizing materialist interventions in ecological systems.

I will use the methods of analysing maps and use

collages to communicate in a more aesthetic and

understanding way. I will construct pictures that gives a new understanding of the scale and the activity of the north sea, as well as the connection between the sea and the land. We organize us through land, but what

happens if we approach the sea same way?

The sea for us is a liquid, dynamic surface, unreadable without a navigation system and a map. The map gives us an opportunity to see activities and routes on the sea, but always from a flight perspective, too big of a scale for us to grasp.

I want to collect information in different scales and formats, and make scenarios to tell a new story and provide a new viewpoint to our connection to the sea.