Third Space: An Archive of Life
This page documents a year-long interdisciplinary art and science collaboration between SF-based artist, Mark Baugh-Sasaki, and marine ecologist and artist, Mehr Kumar. The show consists of two pieces, Sea of Dust (2024) and Double Negatives (2024) and will be on display at Stanford University until June of 2025.
Artist statement:
“Over the last year, Mark Baugh-Sasaki and Mehr Kumar have been using art as an interdisciplinary method to explore the Southern Ocean ecosystem. Their collaboration has been about building and expanding community and understanding each other as researchers, as artists, and as people. Together, they ask: What does it mean to restore an ecosystem? What does that look like and to what end? What role do our perceptions of “nature” or “natural” play in our decision making? What different perspectives do we bring as artist and scientist?”
Sea of Dust, Baugh-Sasaki + Kumar (2024)
Double Negatives, Baugh-Sasaki + Kumar (2024)
Sea of Dust (2024)
Mark Baugh-Sasaki and Mehr Kumar (2024)
Acrylic, ocean water, iron steel
“In this collaborative research process, iron emerged as a symbol of restoration in the ecosystem. Iron is brought into the ocean through wind-blown dust from continents. In the Southern Ocean, wehre continents are sparse and frozen, iron has become a limiting nutrient for life. But life created balance: whale feces, with iron concentrations 10 million times higher than in seawater, fertilized phytoplankton blooms, which in turn supported a thriving krill population.
In the 20th century, after fewer than a dozen industrialized countries removed more than 1 million whales--double the biomass of all wild animals on earth today-- this balance was compromised. In the absence of whales and their iron-rich poop, krill populations suffered, and so, too, did the ecosystem's ability to sequester carbon. Human involvement over just 70 years--roughly the lifespan of a blue whale--drastically disrupted the ecosystem.
Since then, scientists have used iron to fertilize the sea in an effort to jumpstart recovery in a series of controversial experiments. At once, iron in the Southern Ocean is symbolic of limitation, the human hand, and the potential for restoration in the system. This installation is a physical expression of their ongoing collaboration.
In “Sea of Dust”, Baugh-Sasaki and Kumar became fascinated by how this simple element crosses so many narratives from, ecological, biological, geopolitical, and anthropogenic. The installation is made up of four individual interactive sculptures that are placed along the length of the terrace. Each element consists of an acrylic cylinder filled with ocean water and iron filings. Viewers are invited to rotate the cylinders 180 degrees causing the iron filings to disperse through the water column.This action both mimics the sedimentation process that occurs in the oceans as well as creates an ever changing abstract form morphing through the water. The more each cylinder is interacted with the more it will change color through the oxidation of the iron. The work becomes a record of human intervention and draws parallels to the marks we leave in our environments. The installation will continue to evolve over the length of the exhibition and its final form will be ever changing.”
Double Negatives (2024)
Mark Baugh-Sasaki and Mehr Kumar (2024)
Acrylic
“Double Negatives consists of groupings of collaborative images created by Baugh-Sasaki and Kumar. The images were created using a 35mm film camera where one person photographed one composition and then passed the camera to the other to take another composition. Each composition is overlaid over the previous image to create a double exposure photograph. Neither knows what the other has photographed and thus introduces an element of chance to the image. The images created are a blend of each individual's perception of place thus creating a hybrid space. Baugh-Sasaki then deconstructs them and creates abstract forms that are composed across the windows of the building that suggest geological formations and environments created through their shared experience of a site. It calls into question what we consider to be “natural” or “nature”, becoming a metaphor for the collaboration, and our collective perception of the world around us.”
