2025, steel chair and table, sea glass pawns with metal traces, Paolina Kühr & Luka Perkins-Petit. Open Studios, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, NL.

this installation introduces a developing strand of orsa studio: remediating heavy metal pollution with algae-based glass. The installation concept was co-devised with invited artist Luka Perkins-Petit (2000, France).

The first is a many-houred archive of the prestigious chess championship organised and sponsored by this steel company. The other is a 24/7 stream of Tata’s sprawling industrial plant at Wijk aan Zee. Run by activists, the feeds are algorithmically monitored to spot clouds coming from the industrial plant for ongoing lawsuits.

There are two main results when you search for ‘Tata Steel Livestream’ on YouTube. 

While both channels are emitted from the same seaside town, they are intended with radically different forms of spectatorship in mind - between citizen surveillance and entertainment. 

The Dutch company is the largest heavy metal polluter in the Netherlands. Lead, cadmium, nickel, seep out as byproducts from steel production. Here, while anchoring research on heavy metals in the local reality of Tata’s toxicity, the chess board became the interface for embodied ecological tension.

Each pawn, cast from microalgae glass, carries traces of metal within them. In the glass industry, metal oxides are intentionally added to glass to alter color and properties. Here, the process is reimagined. Microalgae possess the natural ability to encapsulate heavy metals in their cells when found in excess. If transformed into glass, these elements that flow invisibly through our waters, posing lasting risks to human and environmental health, could become trapped and visible, giving rise to new colors shaped by their history of exposure. 

Microalgae’s ability to absorb CO₂ and bind heavy metals highlights nature’s power to remediate the environment. Aligning production with natural cycles suggests systemic change, yet relying solely on biological resilience risks letting these organisms silently absorb what we refuse to face. Invisible legacies emerge as “negative commons”—contaminated waters, polluted soils, and industrial dependencies. Each move we make unfolds within an inherited configuration, a flawed match shaped by those before us. Like the metals sealed within the glass, these histories cannot be undone: only made visible, acknowledged, and played differently.