As The Earliest Carrier Emerges

As Earliest Carrier Emerges (2024) is a video installation by Kristina Õllek and Kert Viiart-Õllek that blends fiction and documentary to explore the world from the perspective of ctenophores (comb jellies)—the earliest animals to evolve on Earth, around 700 million years ago. For decades, scientists debated which animal came first; only in May 2023 was the status of ctenophores as the earliest animals confirmed (Nature). Drifting through the waters then and now, ctenophores are transparent, gelatinous invertebrates composed of 95% water. Highly resilient, they survive extreme variations in salinity, temperature, and other conditions. As hermaphrodites, they can self-fertilize. Native to temperate and subtropical estuaries along the Atlantic coasts of the Americas, they arrived in the Black Sea in the early 1980s via ship ballast water (or currency), dramatically altering local ecosystems. Within a decade they spread to the Caspian Sea and across European seas. Since 2000, they have been listed among the "100 most invasive species on Earth." Once carriers of life, they are now framed as notorious invaders, raising the question: what defines an "invasive" species, and who is invading whom?