Steven Humblet (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp) and Inge Henneman (Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp) in conversation with artist Mirja Busch and ecotoxicologists Ronny Blust (University of Antwerp).
One of the aims of the Hydromedia project was to connect artists with scientists. During the Antwerp residency this led to a collaboration between the Berlin-based artist Mirja Busch and professor in eco-toxicology Ronny Blust of the University of Antwerp. To assess the value and possible pitfalls of such a collaboration, we invited both to sit for an interview in which we discussed their expectations of what such a collaboration could entail and how it could be beneficial to both artists and scientists.
Steven Humblet and Inge Henneman (HH): We would like to start with you, Mirja, because at the beginning you seemed hesitant about including a scientific perspective into your project. Could you say something about the reasons why you were somewhat doubtful at first?
Mirja Busch (MB): I was not truly doubtful, as I recall already having conversations with Ronny during the Antwerp symposium of Hydromedia. What made me hesitate or feel a bit uncertain about had to do with how to work with, or even integrate, scientific data. In a group meeting we spoke about what it means to leave behind all the sensual and the haptic in the artistic process and to engage with pure data. That pushed me out of my comfort zone. But I also believe it’s beneficial to be challenged that way. I was already interested in scientific language and methods and wanted to explore them further. Of course, as an artist you always have to appropriate things, make them work in the context of your artistic practice. To be honest, I’m still in that process. To translate the data in a visual graph was a first step. It was essential to understand the data and to interrelate them. (The values for each puddle were contrasted with environmental quality standards for freshwater rivers and WHO drinking water, leading to only a few chemically stressed puddles. To visualize the unique profile of each puddle, values for each were charted on a logarithmic scale and contrasted with the found medians for each substance.)
HH: Ronny, with the START-project you initiated at the University of Antwerp you want to bring scientists and artists together. What were your expectations of what could happen when bringing these two different worlds together? Why did you think it would be interesting for both parties to be involved in such a collaborative process?
Ronny Blust (RB): I noticed that scientists and artists sometimes, maybe not so frequently, but still with a certain frequency, work along similar lines of interest. But they often do it next to each other or after each other instead of together. In fact, the idea already emerged since quite a long time that, certainly within the Antwerp environment of higher education, we have the possibility to bringing these two areas of expertise, of what I sometimes call brain organization or orientation, together and to create synergies from that. And when I was invited to present a lecture at the Hydromedia symposium to talk about water and water pollution in the context of the city of Antwerp, I had the opportunity to talk and interact with the four visiting resident artists invited for the Antwerp chapter of that project. When meeting them, I immediately recognized that there could be some connectivity. A key example was Mirja’s project, basically also because it was focused on water, more specifically on city puddles. In our department we have been doing quite a lot of environmental monitoring, but never in puddles, and certainly not city puddles. And since she was basically studying these puddles as a reflection of the urban environment, I thought we could do something together to further characterize these puddles. I noticed she was sampling the water, putting it in bottles and putting them on display. So, the question arose as to whether these samples tell an additional story? Can we learn something from that, and could our analysis of that water be useful for Mirja? And so, together we explored the possibilities of a collaboration.
HH: And did you learn something new from these samples?
RB: Absolutely. Environmental monitoring, as required by the E.U., is a real science. We must monitor air pollution, water pollution, and so on. Still, this requires a lot of investment, for instance in organization, time and equipment. In the past we’ve already used methods derived from citizen science to monitor dust accumulation on ivy leaves, which can be found all over the city. The study of puddles could be understood as another example of a novel way to approach the study of water pollution. From a scientific perspective, you must understand that a puddle is a very dynamic system and therefore quite complicated to study. A puddle comes and goes, but in the process it also collects the nearby environment and the pollutants it contains. So, we decided to do a physical and chemical analysis of the water collected by Mirja, to see what we could learn from that. This of course was a first exploration; we now must take it a step further.
MB: I think we share a common question: what story can a puddle tell? I believe there is a lot of potential in the aesthetic and narrative elements a puddle can offer. Both as artists and scientists, we are searching for alternative ways to tell stories that allow us to find new approaches to everyday things. A puddle is usually overlooked because it seems insignificant. But when you look closely, you may find many stories that are stored in this small body of water. What’s fascinating is exactly this entanglement with the environment where the puddle acts as a collector and becomes a hotspot that condenses information.
HH: Ronny, would you have thought of researching puddles without having met Mirja?
RB: No, no. The idea came from Mirja. You could say that from a scientific perspective, we have overlooked the meaning of puddles. We also checked the scientific literature and found there is very little on puddles. This neglected area has been opened for us by an artist.
HH: Yes, but which type of puddles are we talking about? Are all kinds of puddles of similar interest for scientists? Does a pond fall under the definition of a puddle, for instance?
MB: I think people often confuse a puddle and a pond. A pond is deeper and has a longer lifespan and therefore can develop into a niche or biotope. The city puddle is more ephemeral. It has a shorter presence in its wet state. The puddle is a dynamic body of water, constantly in flux, infiltrating and evaporating. A puddle is also an anthropogenic phenomenon, as it relies on a human-built or reshaped environment to exist. I would say it is a companion to humans, not something you typically find in untouched nature. Of course, this also raises a question of classification. What exactly is a puddle? And when does it transform into something else?
RB: This classification issue indeed matters. Because when I was referring to the puddles that scientifically have not been studied intensively, then I refer to a specific type of what I would call the constrained city type of puddles. There are, of course, many other types of puddles which have ecological meaning, like temporary drinking places for certain species or animals. These drinking places and ponds have gained much more attention.
HH: Mirja has developed a classification system of city puddles. While her system is more poetic than scientific, could it nevertheless be useful for scientists? Has the city puddle become a possible research-topic in the scientific community and are students interested in it?
RB: Yes, of course. It’s an emerging topic and a new way of monitoring and documenting the urban environment. There are still challenges, mostly connected with the intense dynamics of puddles. We can learn from having a analytical look at puddles, taking into account their extreme dynamics and what they tell us about the urban environment, and possibly also pollution and climate change in an urban context.
MB: We’ve so far analysed some nutrients and heavy metals, but there’s so much more information to be found in puddle water. As a runoff point in a city, a puddle is much larger than it seems—it’s just the visible spot where all the water from the area gathers. Just like a river, a puddle has a catchment area. What really interests me is the idea of the puddle as a hotspot, collecting pollution, debris, and all kinds of materials, and storing them in a small crack or hole. When it dries, its sediment retains traces of all the rain or collection events, forming layers of pollution over time. And because puddles usually form in the same spot for years, they become long-term archives for these environmental changes.
HH: What surprises us is that both of you share a certain scientific attitude. Mirja starts building up a system based on keen observation. And from these observations, she reflects on what a puddle is. She poses questions, analyzes and classifies puddles. She even constructed a new vocabulary to create a typology of puddles. It is somewhat like scientific discourse which also develops a strict methodology to study a certain phenomenon. Is it the similarity between these methods of research that drew you to work together?
MB: No, I think I’m more interested in finding common ground. When Ronny was presenting at the symposium, it was his approach towards the study of the environment that caught my attention. I believe you were talking about a mussel—or was it a snail? You were taking up the perspective of a non-human species and examining how different bodies of water, like rivers and the sea, are entangled in the pollution of natural environments. The way you framed the story of pollution connects with what I’m trying to do—to uncover the stories of puddles. What drives my research is a passion for an often-overlooked phenomenon. It is so difficult to grasp, so elusive. I want to understand how a puddle interacts with its environment. In a sense, I’m trying to develop ‘an ontology of the puddle’.
HH: Is this maybe the reason for the doubt you felt a bit in the beginning, that collecting more data would eventually lead to a more one-dimensional way of looking at your work, thereby undermining or even diminishing its poetic or even aesthetic quality? Because now your dealings with the puddle are open and multi-dimensional.
MB: For me it is about adding a new layer and learning a new language. Why don’t artists and scientists collaborate more often? I think it’s because they are speaking different languages and fear they won’t understand each other. That’s why this is such a great opportunity to learn about this language, to understand the methods and to engage with the data, and to see if there is a way to translate it into something visual and aesthetic. What I want to avoid is simply taking data or facts, and then create something from it which isn’t appropriate.
RB: In a sense, it’s relatively easy to generate data. Which is also why we started profiling the presence of nutrients and heavy metals in puddle water, because that is something we could rapidly do. But there are also other possibilities. We must explore what is in there, not only from a scientific perspective, but also from a perspective that the data could become useful from an artistic point of view.
HH: Is it also about trying to translate scientific data into aesthetic work that could reach a larger public? This might prove difficult because art is not meant to be an illustration of scientific insights.
MB: I don’t think that’s what we’re aiming for. We’re looking for something new. I agree that combining data with my artistic approach creates something new and raises new questions. That’s how I see the dialogue between art and science—it’s not about finding facts, getting answers, and translating them in another medium, but about sustaining an ongoing conversation that leads to new questions. Art can bring different perspectives. Just as scientific methods are inspiring to me, artistic methods might inspire scientists.
Feb 2024, Antwerp