Stronglyo
A SEA URCHIN AS AN ECOLOGICAL LESSON IN AN AGE OF WITHDRAWAL
Support from Villa Albertine San Francisco
How can we think—or rethink—a shared territory in an age of ecological collapse, when a marine species like the purple sea urchin or Strongylocentrotus purpuratus defies human boundaries?
At a time of political retreat, the oceans tell a different story. A story without borders, made of invisible interdependencies and living flows. The Pacific purple sea urchin, a small creature with hard spines, is one of its silent messengers. From Alaska to Baja California, along the coasts of Canada and California, this urchin forms a continuous presence, without passports or checkpoints, moving through the waters of the North Pacific like an expanding collective body.
Once kept in check by natural predators (sea otters, sunflower sea stars), it has now become invasive in some regions, creating true underwater deserts where once vast kelp forests thrived. It is not merely a symptom of climate change; it is an unintentional agent of ecosystem disruption. By devouring marine forests that store carbon and shelter fragile biodiversity, the urchin acts as a crisis accelerator, a living warning of ongoing collapse.
STRONGYLO, OR THE COSMOPOLITICS OF BORDERLESS LIVING WORLDSRestoring a kelp forest is not simply an ecological act: it is a way of rethinking our place in the fabric of life. Removing urchins to save the kelp places us at the heart of a paradox: destroying in order to repair. It requires embracing this ambiguity and treating care as an imperfect act, always traversed by death and shared res- ponsibility, while respecting the complexity of interactions between species and their environment. Coastal restoration practices form a network of interspecies solidarity. The urchin is neither enemy nor mere victim, but an actor to understand, regulate, and some- times transform into a resource for science, food, or aquaculture. Ecology beco- mes relational and political, aware of its paradoxes and open to negotiating with the instability of life. Restoring an ecosystem is composing a shared story among interdependent existences—human and non-human—that strive, despite every- thing, to repair the world without erasing its complexity. The purple sea urchin invites us to rethink the very notion of a border. Ecological, because ecosystems are interdependent beyond the lines drawn on maps. Politi- cal, because managing life requires cooperation among nations, local communi- ties, and scientific knowledge. Philosophical, because it challenges binary opposi- tions—native/invasive, good/bad—and encourages us to envision a world made of shifting, fragile, and reparable relationships. The urchin becomes a paradoxical symbol: both a fragment of disaster and a tipping point toward a world yet to be reimagined. It is no longer enough to eradicate it; we must learn to live with it, to co-construct a living territory that acknowledges otherness, interdependence, and the urgent need to repair—together—what can still be restored. In this sense, STRONGYLO also becomes a space to question the very notion of ecological restoration: what does it mean to “restore” a natural habitat, and from whose perspective do we speak about it? Through collaboration among artists, scientists, fishers, local communities, and cultural institutions, the project pro- poses a sensitive and interdisciplinary approach to the restoration of kelp forests. It is not only about regenerating an ecosystem, but about understanding the ges- tures, narratives, and responsibilities that accompany any attempt to repair living worlds. Here, to restore means to navigate the tensions between human interven- tion and the autonomy of environments, between care and predation, between specialized knowledge and situated knowledge. By weaving dialogue among diverse actors, STRONGYLO approaches restoration not as a purely technical operation, but as a relational process, shaped by uncertainty, negotiation, and emotion. Offering a way to redefine our relationship to the world by recognizing the plurality of beings that compose it.
