What connects a weakened ecosystem to a global food culture? Umi No Oya – Mother of the Sea tells the story of a discovery that revolutionized Japanese nori aquaculture and led to global sushi culture. With sensitive landscape images and a keen sense of Japanese cultural history, the film sheds light on international scientific interdependencies and the resilience of people in a world shaped by climate change and upheaval. It combines artistic and personal biographies to reflect on the balance between progress and sustainable action. How can science, art and culture meet the challenges of the future?

  • Swiss artist and chef Maya Minder and author and curator Ewen Chardronnet investigate in their work the potential of algae in the ecological transition. In this film diary, they explore the legacy of British algologist Kathleen Drew-Baker, whose crucial scientific discovery in 1949 about the life cycles of red algae contributed to the rise of nori aquaculture in post-war Japan. The film pays tribute to Drew as Umi No Oya (ウミノヲヤ) – the mother of the sea – and looks for inspiration in the resilience she instilled in post-war Kyushu to face the new challenges of climate change.

Swiss artist and chef Maya Minder and author and curator Ewen Chardronnet investigate in their work the potential of algae in the ecological transition. In this film diary, they explore the legacy of British algologist Kathleen Drew-Baker, whose crucial scientific discovery in 1949 about the life cycles of red algae contributed to the rise of nori aquaculture in post-war Japan. The film pays tribute to Drew as Umi No Oya (ウミノヲヤ) – the mother of the sea – and looks for inspiration in the resilience she instilled in post-war Kyushu to face the new challenges of climate change.

Directors’ note

The urgency of the environmental crisis demands societal change – reducing our collective carbon footprint, adopting sustainable energies, food alternatives and new lifestyles. Whether as carbon sinks or food alternatives, algae can play a crucial role in the ecological transition. They can be used as biomaterials, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Their nutritional role is well recognized, and the food cultures of Northeast Asia did not wait for the environmental crises of the 20th century to incorporate macro-algae such as kombu, wakame and nori into their diets.

In an interview filmed in 2021 at the Roscoff Marine Station on the northern coast of Brittany, France, Philippe Potin, a world-renowned researcher in the study of algae, told us the story of Kathleen Drew-Baker – how this algologist, who struggled as a woman in the pre-war Western scientific world, became a quasi-saintly figure in Japan, acquiring the legendary status of umi no oya – mother of the sea. We saw in her singular destiny many reasons to seek out more on site.

Indeed, we are both convinced that we need new narratives to help us meet the challenges raised by the Anthropocene era. We’re working on this attentively, and in many different artistic and narrative forms. But as we went to meet Kathleen Drew-Baker and the community that honors her in Japan, it was film that stood out as the medium that could allow us to share the common sensibilities between science and culture at the heart of our rich encounters with the Ariake Sea fishing communities.

The perspectives of science are always place-specific and context-dependent: there are many sciences, just as there are many modernities. Drew-Baker’s drive and enthusiasm helped spread her methodology not only to Japan, but throughout East Asia, as far afield as Korea and China. Through her story, it is remarkable to see how science could be made accessible to farmers simply by using tools such as the microscope, an exemplary case of citizen science. From this emerged in Kyushu a resilient, DIY biology method that led to the development of an aquaculture industry and the globalization of sushi culture.

With this film, we also salute a passionate woman who overcame patriarchal obstacles and the enmities of a world war to advance her scientific field. Drew-Baker wasn’t paid most of her career because she was married with another research from Manchester University. But we are not trying to glorify her as a heroic, hypothetical English savior of Japan. Rather, we wish to tell the story of how her scientific generosity stimulated the resilience of an entire community of scientists and fishermen, on the other side of the world, in the years following the atomic bombs of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

At a time when TEPCO is discharging contaminated water off the coast of Fukushima, the protection of ocean ecosystems is a sensitive issue in Japan. Algae do not need pesticides or fertilizers to grow naturally. But the watersheds that release them into the waters of the Ariake Sea cause micro-algae to proliferate, disrupting sensitive marine areas that are generally devoted to nori aquaculture. How can farmers remedy these unbalanced ecosystems?

60 years ago, the scientists and fishermen of this Ariake Sea community decided to pay tribute to Drew-Baker. With this film, we seek to pay tribute to this community and suggest how it can draw on its own history of resilience to imagine ways to overcome current problems linked to disrupted ecosystems and global warming.

The film’s title reflects our interest in the animism of nature’s bounty that lies at the heart of Shintoism, the bounty of the sea revealed here by the deity status conferred on Kathleen Drew-Baker. But this story, which borrows from venerable traditions, also reveals the inseparable “nature-culture” relationship advanced by philosopher Donna Haraway or anthropologists Philippe Descola and Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing.

“We evolve through what we eat” is the film’s final invitation to reflect on our deep intimacy with food, but also an invitation to pursue this film’s research into new types of narratives – narratives that highlight the major role played by algae in human evolution, and our conviction that they can also play a role in food and ecological transitions to come.

Ewen Chardronnet & Maya Minder

Directors

Ewen Chardronnet (1971, FR) is an artist, author, journalist and curator. He is currently editor-in-chief of the bilingual web magazine Makery.info, The Laboratory Planet occasional newspaper and coordinator of the Creative Europe cooperation programs “More-Than-Planet” (2022-2025) and “Rewilding Cultures” (2022-2026). In his work, he is interested in practices, tactics and speculations that connect artistic research and scientific knowledge to the creation of social situations that intertwine discourses and shifts of perspectives in the very fabric of society. Since 2016, Ewen Chardronnet and Xavier Bailly (CNRS-Sorbonne, Roscoff Marine Station) lead the art & marine science platform Roscosmoe.org. Recent books include “Mojave Epiphanie – une histoire secrète du programme spatial américain” (Actes Sud – Inculte, 2016), “Space Without Rockets” (ed., UV editions, 2022).

Maya Minder (1983, CH) is an artist and chef working in the field of Eat Art. “Cooking thus transforms us”, is a framework she weaves like a strings through her work. Cooking serves her to reveal the metaphor of the human transformation of raw nature into cooked culture and she combines it to the evolutionary ideas of a symbiotic co-existence between plants, animals and humans. She creates entanglements between human commodities and animism of nature. A table of diversity, not yet digested. Following the Biohacker, Maker and Thirdspace movement she uses grassroots ideas, safe zones and citizen science into her field to enable collective story telling through food and cooking. Maya Minder lives and works in Zurich and is co-founder of the Open Science Lab at Zentralwaescherei Zurich. She’s a board member of Food Culture Days (Vevey, CH) and co-president of the Swiss Mechatronic Art Society – SGMK (Zurich, CH). She’s currently ambassador for Vitality.Swiss – on the road to World Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai – program of the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

An ART2M production

Art2M (Art To Machine) is an innovative company and think & do tank that explores and supports creative communities at the intersection of art, design, media, education, ecology, science and technology.
ART2M produces media, web platforms, knowledge bases, films, artworks and events (workshops, residencies, conferences, food performances, exhibitions, festivals) and orients its activities around different lines of research-action.
ART2M contributes at the national and international level to the construction of interdisciplinary networks of key actors around changing societal issues. Art2M is directed by Anne-Cécile Worms.

Anne-Cécile Worms

Entrepreneur and editor, graduate of the “Institut d’études Politiques de Paris”, Anne-Cécile Worms, who co-founded her first start-up in electronic music in 1999, has been publishing MCD the Magazine of Digital Cultures from 2003 to 2016. Founder and director of Digital Art International created in 2009, she sold the Digitalarti and Artlab brands in June 2013 to launch Art2M (Art to Machine) and the associated projects Makery.info and ArtJaws.com in 2014.

As an innovative company and think & do tank Art2M explores and supports creative communities at the intersection of art, design, media, education, ecology, science and technology and contributes at the national and international level to the construction of interdisciplinary networks of key actors around changing societal issues.
Art2M produces media, web platforms, knowledge bases, films, artworks and events (workshops, residencies, conferences, food performances, exhibitions, festivals).
Anne-Cécile Worms is an expert in media arts for the French Institute.

Characters

Fumiichi Yamamoto

Fumiichi Yamamoto

The living memory of the Drew-Baker memorial historical series of events is Professor Ota’s assistant and heir, 85-year-old nori researcher Fumiichi Yamamoto. He still works in a makeshift warehouse laboratory just down the road from Sumiyoshi park in Uto, spending eight hours a day looking into a microscope, analyzing the current health of cultivated nori seedlings. The story of the Drew-Baker monument is also his story.

Yumiko Shimada

Yumiko Shimada

Born into a family of nori farmers, Yumiko Shimada became actively involved in the family business from a young age. As an adult, her appreciation of quality nori painstakingly cultivated and produced locally around the Ariake Sea grew. Today, she manages and accompanies the year-round cycle of hands-on nori cultivation, from seeding and harvesting to processing, together with her son and daughter-in-law. She opened her own nori shop in Kawachi in 2023.

Takahiro Yamamoto

Takahiro Yamamoto

Born in 1983, Takahiro Yamamoto is Senior Managing Director and Head of the Sales Division at Yamamoto Noriten. After graduating from Keio University Law School in 2005, he joined a major bank to work in corporate sales. He joined Yamamoto Noriten in 2008. In the purchasing division, he studied the entire nori sector. He then worked in a wholly-owned subsidiary in Shanghai, where he helped launch onigiri shops. As the new head of the company, he now manages all Yamamoto Noriten sales and is involved in activities to promote nori culture.

Maya Minder

Maya Minder

Maya Minder, the film‘s co-director, guides us through the film team’s research into the legacy of Kathleen Drew-Baker. At first in voiceover, she gradually appears in the film, becoming a character in her own right in the second half. Maya Minder is an artist and chef working in the field of Eat Art. “Cooking thus transforms us”, is a framework she weaves like a string through her work. With a Korean mother and a Swiss father with British roots, Maya Minder defines herself as a native of planet Earth. She’s currently ambassador for Vitality.Swiss - on the road to World Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai - program of the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

Yumiko Shimada’s parents

Yumiko Shimada’s parents

Yumiko’s parents remember tough times after the Second World War when food was scarce and the nori harvest was unpredictable. Her father has fond memories of Fusao Ota teaching him and others how to recognize nori spores under the microscope. The whole Shimada family regards Professor Ota as the true savior of the local nori industry.

Noriko’s Kitchen

Noriko’s Kitchen

Noriko’s Kitchen is the women’s division of the Sumiyoshi Fisheries Cooperative, which supports the local nori farmers with their cooking and preparation of nori products in various forms. Their signature products are nori tsukudani (preserved nori simmered with sugar, soy sauce, mirin and other seasonings) and tokoroten (cold agar agar noodles in a refreshing sauce). They also prepare the nori gift bags that are distributed after the Drew festival.

In memory

Kathleen Drew-Baker

Born in 1901, Kathleen Drew-Baker began working as a lecturer in Manchester’s cryptogamic botany department in 1922. Although she was one of the first women in Britain to receive a Commonwealth Fellowship in 1925 to research seaweed in California and Hawaii, she began working as an unpaid research fellow after her marriage to another academic, Henry Wright-Baker, in 1928. At the time the University did not employ married women.

Nevertheless, Kathleen Drew-Baker was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by Manchester University in 1939. During the war she continued her research on Porphyra red algae from the Welsh Coast using aquariums that her husband built in their cellar and garden.

In 1949, her article on the discovery of the Conchocelis phase of Porphyra Umbilicalis was published in Nature. In 1952, she co-founded the British Phycological Society, serving as its first president.

Kathleen Drew-Baker died of cancer in 1957. In her lifetime, she never visited Japan.

Sokichi Segawa

Born in 1904, Sokichi Segawa studied algology at the Imperial University of Hokkaido and the Mitsui Institute of Marine Biology in Shimoda. In 1937, he joined the staff of the Mitsui Institute and married Shizuko Okamura, daughter of Kintarô Okamura, the “Father of Marine Botany in Japan”. In 1942 the couple moved to Kyushu, where Sokichi Segawa was appointed assistant professor at the University. During these years, and beyond the geopolitical conflicts, Shizuko and Sokichi Segawa developed an epistolary friendship with Kathleen Drew-Baker, who had studied Okamura’s work. It was through these exchanges that they could be quickly informed of Drew-Baker’s important discovery. Sokichi Segawa followed in Okamura’s footsteps, and in 1956 he published “Coloured Illustrations of the Seaweeds of Japan,” which comprises beautiful photographs showing the habits of 592 species.

When Drew-Baker passed away in 1957, the Segawas spoke of erecting a monument to her. But in 1960, a few days after he became full professor of marine botany at Kyushu University, Sokichi Segawa died of a sudden cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 56.

Fusao Ota

Born in 1918, Fusao Ota was a young research engineer at the Kagami branch of the Kumamoto Prefectural Fisheries Research Institute, when Sokichi Segawa told him of Drew-Baker’s discoveries. Ota began practical research and in 1953 succeeded in developing an artificial seeding technology based on conchocelis filaments from oyster shells. By stabilizing this technology, he was able to spread it throughout the Ariake Sea region and to seaweed-growing areas across Japan.
After Segawa’s sudden death in 1960, Ota took up the torch, alongside Shizuko Segawa, to propose building the Drew memorial to cement their collective breakthrough in seaweed research and culture.

Later, a monument was also erected on the site of Ota’s work in Kagami, indicating the “location of the first artificial nori seedlings”. Fusao Ota passed away in 2013 at the honorable age of 95.

Art2M
presents

Umi No Oya
ウミノヲヤ

a film by Ewen Chardronnet and Maya Minder

GENRE: Feature Documentary
LENGTH: 60 min
LANGUAGES: english, japanese
SUBTITLES: english, japanese, french, german
SHOOTING FORMAT: HD
SCREENING FORMAT: DCP, Dolby Digital 5.1

Directed by Ewen Chardronnet
Voice: Maya Minder
Written by: Ewen Chardronnet, Cherise Fong, Maya Minder
Image: Quentin Aurat, Lisa Biedlingmaier, Ewen Chardronnet, Maya Minder, Ryu Oyama

Editing: Quentin Aurat, Ewen Chardronnet
Sound & music: Quentin Aurat, Kyoka
Sound editing & mixing: Quentin Aurat
Additional sound recordings: Ewen Chardronnet, Cherise Fong
Additional images: Elisa Chaveneau
Fixers, interpreters: Cherise Fong, Ryu Oyama
Color grading: Quentin Aurat

Production manager: Anne-Cécile Worms
Executive production: Ewen Chardronnet

Music
Intro & outro theme: Kyoka, “Umi No Oya, variation sonore”
UoC workshop soundtrack: Quentin Aurat, “Picnic”
End credits theme: Quentin Aurat, “Uto bay”
and additional sound creations by Quentin Aurat

Production: ART2M
Co-production: Antre Peaux, Ewen Chardronnet, Maya Minder

With the friendly support of the City of Uto, Ariake Nori Research Institute, Kumamoto Prefectural Federation of Fishermen’s Cooperatives, Kumamoto Prefectural Fisheries Research Center, Fuga nori shop in Kumamoto; metaPhorest / Waseda University, BioClub Tokyo, Yamamoto Noriten Company, Shibaura House, University of Creativity, Kyodo House in Tokyo; Swissnex in Japan; Heueberghaus artists’ residency in Braunwald (CH).

With the financial support of ART2M’s Roscosmoe.org platform, as part of More-Than-Planet, a cooperation co-funded by the Creative Europe program of the European Union; Antre Peaux and the program ‘Transition écologique et résilience : Les acteurs culturels s’engagent !’ of the Région Centre Val-de-Loire (FR); Pro Helvetia – fondation suisse pour la culture (CH); PALM, magazine of the Jeu de Paume museum, Paris; DDA Contemporary Art (FR); Vitality.Swiss – on the road to World Expo 2025 Osaka Kansai and the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

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1 + 0 = ?

We would like to thank the following people who helped make this film possible:

Cherise Fong and Ryu Oyama, our dear collaborators in Japan. Quentin Aurat, our chief operator, a true swiss katana of film making. Philippe Potin from the Station Biologique de Roscoff for introducing us to the story of Kathleen Drew-Baker. Fumiichi Yamamoto for welcoming us at the Drew-Baker memorial and into his lab, for sharing his life experience and expertise, for introducing us to Shigeki Motomatsu, Mayor of Uto, to the Kumamoto Fisheries Cooperative Association and Noriko’s Kitchen. Nakako Hazemoto, manager of Fuga nori shop in Kumamoto, who warmly passed on our request to Mr. Shiraishi, who graciously put us in contact with Yumiko Shimada. Yumiko Shimada and her family and team from Ariake Nori Research Institute for her warm welcome, guidance and support to learn more on history and science at the Kumamoto Prefecture Federation of Fishermen’s Cooperative Associations and the Kumamoto Prefectural Fisheries Research Center. Takahiro Yamamoto, CEO of Yamamoto Noriten in Tokyo for the time he devoted to our project and for agreeing to be an ambassador of our film. Shigeki Motomatsu, Mayor of Uto, for taking time to welcome us and share his experience of the importance of the Drew-Baker memorial. Kawakami Ryo, Tsutsumi Daichi, Takemoto and the teams and staff of the Kumamoto Prefectural Federation of Fishermen’s Cooperatives for their support and the time they devoted to our visits. Tsutsumi Daichi and Sumiyoshi Fisheries association, Andou Noriyuki, Takahi Shinya and the Kumamoto Prefectural Fisheries Research Center for opening up their archives. The Shinto priest and the entire community of the nori fishing industry for accepting our cameras at the ceremony. The Noriko’s Kitchen association for accepting our cameras and cooking with us. Hideo Iwasaki and the metaPhorest platform at Waseda University in Tokyo for his invitation in 2022, which enabled us to obtain a visa during Covid-19 time. Masaru Ito, Haruna Hori, Miho Shimizu and the Shibaura House and Hachi Nasui, Onami Lizuka and the University of Creativity for hosting our workshops together with the Swiss Embassy in Japan. Hidenori Kondo and family at Kyodo House for their hospitality in their beautiful house in Tokyo. Georg Tremmel and people from BioClub Tokyo for their support and hospitality in Tokyo. Yuko Takahachi, Jonas Pulver, Sarah Bokman, Ayako Hirose, Sachiko Nagai from the Swiss Embassy in Japan for their continuous support since our first meeting in May 2022. Isabelle Carlier, Erik Noulette, Diane Pigeau, Fiona Guerra, Bruno Creugny, Pénélope Yatropoulos, Olivia Earle, Alice Trocellier, Sandra Emonet, Tatiana Komaroff, Elisabeth Delval, Anne-Soizic Croslard, Léa Corredig, Dorine Goergen, Thomas Richoux and the entire Antre Peaux team for their support from 2022 to 2024. Constance-Juliette Meffre and DDA Contemporary Art for their advice and support with travels. Our producer Anne-Cécile Worms for her continuous support.

… And the following people for their advice, help and support throughout the project:

Lisa Biedlingmaier, Elisa Chaveneau, Fiammetta Pennisi and Swissnex in Japan, Tokio Murai, Sachiko Hirosue, Thomas Ortiz, Gergely Péter Barna, Xavier Bailly, Gaëlle Correc, David Legrand, David Bernagout, Arthur Barbe, François Robin, Adrien Chevrot, Marta Ponsa, Mélanie Lemaréchal, Lei Saito, Cédric Carles, Charlotte Bartissol, Malo Chardronnet, Tibor Minder, Kazimir Minder, Julie Vérin, Jon Haure-Placé, Michel Coz, Biocéan Roscoff, Edouard Bal, Sandra Bühler, Marion Neumann, Aya Domenig, Kyong-Hwa Minder-Yu, Catherine Hug and the Kunsthaus Zurich teams, Digitale Gesellchaft, Yuzuru Maeda, Michiko Hanawa, Christian Fischer, Leo Bachmann, Angela Hausheer and the Heuerberg Arts Residency, Kulturbüro Zürich, Martina Huber, Gianni Jetzer, Corinna Mattner, Anne-Laure Franchette, Gabriel N. Gee, Lisa Jankovics, Claude Treptow, Marc Dusseiller, Hackteria, SGMK and Bitwäscherei.

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