A Tiny Soft Body of Water
The space between water and land is where two worlds collide and where we can find traces and ghosts of past life. Wandering and observing are tools to relearn curiosity for the more-than-human environment that we live in. One day at the beach, I was about to pick up a piece of shiny plastic when I realized it was a tiny soft body of water. The strange beauty was the remains of the body of a sea butterfly (Cymbulim peronii).
Materials: glass pyramid filled with water; mixed media . Photo credits: Lucas Lemme
The hologram is a tool to bring a ghost back to life in the form of a flickering light image. Combining this with a 3D animation of an endangered butterfly species (Tomares ballus) from this region reminds us of the beautiful forms of life we are in danger of losing.
What tools are there to draw attention to the forgetting of more-than-human stories? What can conservation of sensitive life forms look like?
The sculptures and installations of Suska Bastian articulate organic yet human-made registers of environments. She employs an experimental approach to investigating a wide range of materials she often finds in her surroundings. Bastian seeks to activate forms of making that call to attention a sense of intimacy with the natural world, speaking of a fundamental inseparability of the human sphere of technology and the organic sphere of nature. Her process of bio-technical hybridization can thus be characterized as an attempt to unlock access points of empathy for the natural environment.