Transparency & Viscosity
✫A Visit with Sasha Fishman✫
Sasha Fishman is an artist and researcher based in New York City, currently working towards obtaining her MFA at Columbia University. I was able to visit her at her studio on campus, to see what she was working on, and to get the chance to talk to her in person. Working with materials such as hagfish slime, cicada shells and algae, she is interested in exploring the space that lies between science and sculpture, expanding on the topics of toxicity, transparency and viscosity. She is also fascinated by the complex and mysterious world of marine life. Her book ‘Priscilla,’ in which she recounts her experiences working with hagfish, is available for purchase and in pdf format on her website.
CA: Starting off, can you tell me a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are now?
SF: I was really interested in working with plastics and when I graduated from school I was living in New York and I really didn't have the space to keep working with plastics, so I was forced to find other ways to work with castable materials in the kitchen. I found bioplastics through these two artists in LA that I met when I visited, Haena Yoo and Sterling Wells. They had this crazy show with containers of rotting food and sludge, and things that were cast with bioplastics. You couldn't really tell what was the bioplastics and what was the food. They told me to just look up bioplastic recipes online and it opened up a whole new world. It totally changed the way that I thought about materials, what I could do to create a material and have it perform in the ways that I wanted it to. It also changed what I expected of the material, because it kept failing. I wanted to try every single recipe I could find, and try to identify different sources of materials and different waste streams. What I realized was that the word bioplastic was a term that just gave a name to something that artists do already, which is to create their own materials and castings from things that are interesting to them. As an artist now, looking back on it, I think learning that word was really important, but it also puts it in context with this really commercial thing. I was confused about this for a while, because I also thought I wanted to make a commercial thing.
Can you tell me about your work? How would you describe your practice?
Because of my experience working with these bio-based materials and wanting them to perform a certain way, I became very critical with myself, because I wanted them to perform like a plastic. I wanted them to perform in a way that may not be attainable with my skill sets, or that may not be chemically possible. But there is this sense that there is this possibility, and that is what drives me to keep doing it, even if it is this futile thing. I’ll never stop searching for the answer, but I think that the process of looking for it is more interesting than the answer itself. I think that working with these different organic and inorganic things and with supply chains makes me wonder why I feel the need to control these things. The desire I have to control entropy is very absurd, but I think it is something that all humans have. I’ve been really interested in water and marine life as this space that we don’t understand, and it's also absorbing all of our chemical outputs, and flowing back into us. Lately I’ve been really interested in fountains because the more I work with water the more I have respect for it as something that is so hard to control, is so powerful, and just does what it wants to do. It’s a really magical thing, and I’m just trying to understand it more. The history of fountains is also really interesting. I studied it in Italy, I was researching Italian gardens and they kept talking about how you would hear the sound of fountains and a sense of cooling would come over you, just from hearing water flowing you are drawn towards it. I’m attracted to clear materials for similar reasons, we are all just trying to quench this eternal thirst that we have, so that is why I keep trying to work with something that is transparent, that is passing light through and holding on to this moment that I can never quite articulate.
Do you consider your practice to be multidisciplinary?
Yeah definitely. I call myself an artist and a researcher. When I moved to LA I got to a point when I was working with biomaterials where I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, and I needed some scientific expertise, and I wanted to understand it myself. So I started to take a chemistry class and a microbiology class through community colleges. I reached out to this professor at CalTech and she let me audit her sustainability class so I kept seeing her. This was right before the pandemic, and that was so crucial for me to be able to see her in person. I really wanted to work in a lab at that time, so I brought my materials to her and kept talking to grad students about what I wanted to do. They told me there was this undergraduate research fellowship and I was able to qualify it because I was taking the classes at the community college, even though this was two years after I was an undergrad. She let me apply to the fellowship with a proposal with her lab and PHD students, who were super helpful. I got it and was able to do this summer fellowship. I really wanted to know science and know the process, and I did learn the process and it is so intense. It’s really amazing how rigorous the sciences are. You get so narrow in what you do, because you have to know everything about this very, very specific thing, but then you don’t really get to explore in ways that are very vital to making work as an artist. Because it was during the pandemic I didn’t get to go to the lab, so I had to make my own instruments in my studio to characterize the material I was working with, which was chitosan. I had to measure the viscosity and find how that related to the mechanical properties, because the more viscous the fluid is, the more strong it is, mechanically. In polymer theory if a fluid has a higher viscosity, it should correspond to a material with stronger mechanical properties. If the polymers are longer, they become entangled with other polymers which lends to higher viscosity and ability to withstand force.
I was also looking at the optical properties, trying to understand the transparency. I really like working with scientists because I feel like we can help each other and there’s so much potential for collaboration. The barriers of different practices and fields of study have been really breaking down, though of course there will always be people who are specialists. It's so stimulating to have different ways of thinking and working, there isn’t only one way to do things.
How do you relate to other species within your work?
This is something that I have been trying to understand. I worked with hagfish, and people are really disgusted by them, but working with them has been kind of like exposure therapy for me. There’s this book called Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas that explains that in Leviticus, which is the third book of the Torah, there are certain rules about what you can eat and interact with. Instead of categorizing things by taxonomies they broke things down by the way that they moved. Snakes, and things that moved on their bellies and did not have arms, were not ok according to their standards. There is no real reason that we feel that way, besides the fact that it might make us squeamish or uncomfortable to see something move like that. But I think hagfish are so cute and amazing. I had them during the pandemic, in this aquarium in my studio, which felt really strange because it felt like we were both going through this sense of suffocation. I felt really bad but I just wanted to watch them, though I know that was really selfish of me just to take them. You could argue that since I took them from fishermen I ‘saved’ them from being eaten, but I don’t really like that way of thinking. I also got them for the purpose of extracting something from them, and using them like a product. But in the end I couldn’t do that because I had an ethical dilemma, being that it didn’t feel right and I really cared for them. There was the barrier of the aquarium tank walls and I wanted to be with them and they would cuddle with each other. But it was strange because there was such a gap, because obviously they didn’t want to be there and didn’t care about me, but I felt so connected to them.
When I make materials, I never know where the powders are coming from and I’d never experienced the extraction process, and that's something I’ve been really wanting to understand. Having the hagfish was a really important experience for that, and it is something that I’m still processing and trying to talk about. In the end, when they died, I was crying and making molds of their bodies, because I wanted to preserve them. I originally had five, and of these I had to give away two, because I was having issues with the water levels in the tank, two of them died, and then there was only one left. I didn’t know how to take care of it and maintain its environment, so I released it back to the ocean. I don’t know what my relationship to them is exactly, but they really changed the way I understand myself in the greater context of things. I want to try and understand them more, but also understand what is at stake when we use animals for research and science. How do we decide that that is ok, and how we behave and perform with them?
I also worked with cicadas when the 17 year cicadas were in Baltimore, which is where I grew up. I did a collection and extraction workshop with them, and watching them molt was the most amazing thing to see. I used to be really scared of bugs so it was more exposure therapy for me. Seeing them come out of the ground and molt and dry out their wings is so crazy. They go through seventeen years, come out of the ground, and so many of them don't make it because there’s this choreographed dance they have to do to molt perfectly. If they don’t do it they get stuck and dry in their shells and die. It kept happening and I was so impressed by the ones that made it out, it was just like watching life happen. It was so much life happening in the span of two weeks. Watching other species really closely has given me a lot of respect for them, and I think they are really intelligent. I’m trying to do my best to be really respectful of them, while also trying to navigate how to be with them and learn from them in the least harmful way possible.
Do people use hagfish for research or do they eat them?
They eat them. They are a delicacy in Korea, and Korea overfished them so now they are all fished off of the West Coast. I haven’t been able to find anyone doing research on them in the East Coast, even though they also can be found in the Atlantic. They don’t have any bones, they are really primitive. If you look at the tree of life, lampreys and hagfish are the only surviving species of one branch, while all other life extends from another. Working with them has also made me think about time and all these different cycles of life. When I dissected them, I opened their slime glands and tanned their skin. I went through all these different processes, trying to find a way to work with them without preserving them in plastic. I ended up having to do that because ants were getting in the body. I freeze dried one of their bodies and cast her in resin.
The whole experience was really sad, but really amazing. I still wonder if I deserved to have this amazing experience, but have them die for me. To extract slime from them you have to pinch them, and it was really upsetting to witness. I have videos of the extraction process that I haven’t wanted to show anyone because I thought it might upset them. The whole process was upsetting to me but I’m trying to figure out a way to talk about it.
How do you think humans can change the way they relate to other species?
By sitting, watching, and being with them. With the cicadas it was really easy to do that in ways that weren’t harming them. I would just go out at night and they were everywhere. You also learn so much about the inputs and outputs of an environment by having an aquarium. To maintain an aquarium you have to add microbes and chemicals to alter the PH. You can really learn so much just by watching, which has given me so much empathy and respect for them, and made me want to be really gentle.
The cicadas were everywhere, you would go out at night and they would fall onto your head, it was kind of like the lantern flies. The lantern flies have been so wild to me, I love them. I have a bunch in here that I found. The cicadas have shaped the way that I think about the lantern flies. I’m interested in how controversial they are, yes they’re damaging, but they’re here. The attitude that people have towards them is really interesting, like ‘We have to murder them!” I love them because they kind of move like cicadas, they don’t know where they’re going and they come like this plague-like thing. People love to point fingers and blame things and I feel like they’ve become the epicenter of that. Working with them has been kind of strange because it's like trying to figure out what to do with this dead body, which feels kind of capitalistic. But I think it is also a way for me to form my own understanding of the world, and to make connections with things. There are all these relationships between things that are invisible, and working with them physically helps me see this as a practice.
Can you tell me more about the role of empathy in the development of the project with hagfish?
I took footage of things that were really hard for me to experience and watch, because it wasn’t something I knew how to talk about. These videos captured some very intimate moments with the hagfish. One of them was when she was dying and her tail was still twitching and I didn't know if she was still alive. This was when I found out they have three hearts. I didn’t know what to do, if I should take her out of the tank or leave her in, or if she was suffering or if she could hear me, or know what was going on. I was experiencing a deeper grief. When I got them I drove five hours up to Monterey, during the time when all the fires were happening in California. Even when we got there we could still smell the smoke, which was not what you would expect from such a biodiverse, coastal place. It filled me with a deeper sense of grief, of what we as humans are inflicting on other species with all of our chemicals and plastics. This has been the feeling I’ve been trying to describe, that I also felt with their death.
Do you think that artists can play a role in the process of developing new ways to relate with other species as well as with each other?
Yeah, totally. While intellectualizing something is important, there is also something valuable in feeling and not analyzing too much. Art is one of the few spaces where you are allowed to do that, which is really crucial to being able to step back and look at things from a new perspective.
Do you think it is important to have an ecologically situated art practice? What are your thoughts on working from a time of disaster and toxicity?
I think it's important, but not everyone needs to have one, because if it gets too saturated then we will all be in an echochamber and what are we all saying? Maybe that is why I’m not working with biomaterials as much right now, and working with inorganic materials, though those are still related to ecological things because I’m thinking about supply chains and resource extraction. I think it’s really important for everyone to do what they want to do and what they think is important to talk about. But at the same time I do think we all have a responsibility as artists to say something. I think it's important to be mindful of the waste coming out of your studio and where you get your materials, as well as ways you can reincorporate waste materials into your practice. You don’t have to be making ecologically centered work, but I think there are ways to shift things to become more sustainable and mindful about the way you work.
How do you see your practice evolving in the future?
I really want to grow meat and make meat sculptures. I’m really interested in genetic engineering.
Why is that process interesting to you?
Because it's something that is really scary, and where we are currently headed. It is also a space that is highly unregulated. There are a lot of ethical considerations with things like genetic engineering and designer babies that are related to working with animals, but a lot of this is going to be done by whoever has the most money to do it.
Meat is like bioplastic in a way. To grow it, you have to use fetal bovine serum, which is still using parts of an animal. It is unsustainable and they are trying to find alternatives. There is a constant push to find solutions, but the underbelly of it is that we are able to grow cells and evolve things in the way that we want to, and that is a really scary thing to do. At the same time, I’m really curious and excited about it.
I took a botany class, and there was a lot in it about GMOs. In our current environment, we do need GMOs, there’s no way to go back, we just don’t know a ton about them.
What would be an ideal project for you?
Right now, I want to make a giant fountain outside. In a perfect world, I would have a studio in the same building as a lab that I was working with, so I could make work in my studio and also work with the lab, and be able to go back and forth between these different spaces and ways of thinking, and develop work around this dynamic. Being able to have access to these two kinds of spaces is really hard and I’m looking for ways to be able to do that.
But it's not only about the lab, one residency that I was looking into was seaweed farming in Korea. I really want to learn more about the supply chain and be immersed in the space and learn more about what it's like. That would also be ideal for me.
Why do you think it is important to develop new kinds of materials?
It's important because as a sculptor, things don’t always work the way I want them to, and most materials weren’t designed for the situations I have in mind. For that reason, it's really exciting to think about new potentials for how a material can behave. At the same time, there are many downfalls. Even if something is a perfect material, i.e looks like a plastic, acts like a plastic, is compostable and bio-based etc., at the end of the day it is still something that we need to figure out how to dispose of. Many of the bioplastics being used in commercial areas are called compostable, yet they need to be composted in a certain way. It’s another thing to figure out how to deal with, which makes me feel unsure about what to do. It feels like coming up for a solution for the solution, which gets really complicated. I’m still trying to figure that out.
There are many new biomaterial based products coming out, but what actually works? I feel like we should all admit that we use plastics, because even products marketed as bio-based still might have plastics or petroleum based products or some unsustainable component in them. We need to acknowledge that this is still a step in the right direction, but it is not the solution to all our problems.
Have any books you’ve read informed your work?
Never Home Alone by Robert Dunn is a great one, it's about all the pests and microbes in our houses that we live with. Hyperobjects by Timothy Morton, and the article Why I Look at Fish by Ginger Strand✫