Oyster Readings
Cooking Sections, 2021–22
Installation-Performance
Oysters have populated the waters of Louisiana for millennia, nourishing people living on its coasts. Like a modern palimpsest, oysters record time and events. Similar to tree rings, every season an oyster grows a shell around their lip. As the shell grows it encases the environmental conditions in which they live. Oysters tell stories about storms, hurricanes and droughts, the invention of dredgers, the expansion of Bulbancha/New Orleans and the proliferation of its oyster bars; they also remember oil spills and gas leaks, and more recently, the effects of global pandemics. A series of short filmed oyster readings resulting from interviews with scientists, oyster shuckers, residents, and fisherfolk build up to the physical public reading performances that allow us to read into our common oyster futures. Like fortune tellers reading the palm of the hand, Oyster Readings foresee the future of the coast through the ridged surface of an oyster shell. They take place at a table and stools made from a especially developed material that replaces concrete with discarded oyster shells.
Oyster Readings was commissioned for PROSPECT 5, New Orleans (2021). The readings were adapted to the Firth of Forth as part of In the Eddy of the Stream (2022).
Fabrication: Ashley Pridmore
Oyster readers Bulbancha/New Orleans: Paris Cyan, Isabelle Guzman
Oyster readers Edinburgh: Miriam Donaghey, Hector Dyer, Kirsty Law
