A discussion between Louise Contant, head of collections at the French Musée national de la Marine, Lisa Cubaynes, art history student specializing in underwater museums, and Thierry Perez, marine ecologist with a strong perspective in ocean conservation. Moderated by Juliette Bessette, historian of art and science.

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Underwater museums generally take the form of a series of immersed sculptures that are installed on the seabed. These are new forms of museums that promote an aesthetic experience in an oceanic context while bringing attention to marine biodiversity and the need for its preservation. During this discussion, we discuss how to define a museum from the displaced perspective of an oceanic culture, the links between aesthetics and biodiversity, and how we consider this biodiversity as heritage.

Juliette Bessette: Our discussion will center on an experience: that of visiting underwater museums. All three of you have a specific relation to underwater environments and some of you have spent a significant amount of time underwater. My first question is on an emotional level. If it is something you have already experienced, could you describe what you felt when encountering underwater artworks or artifacts?

Lisa Cubaynes: In the case of underwater museums, we are dealing with sculptures that have been voluntarily immersed and colonized by underwater life, as with the Musée subaquatique in Marseilles, France. When faced with these works, we feel more involved in visiting the museum, more attentive to the pieces: the way we look at the presented object changes, it is not only a sculpture but an environment, life. These are the first emotions that occur to me.

Thierry Perez: I wonder how it’s possible to really be more sensitive and open to the artworks in an environment where other elements appeal to your senses, like the fact that you are in the water, that it’s cold, maybe darker.

Lisa Cubaynes: I would say these are heightened, albeit different sensitivities. Our senses are convoked, but in a different way. Sight, for instance, can become a bit blurry. As we see things bigger underwater than on land, we can also detect other things like the effect of the light, or experience the sense of sound, of our movements, differently. It is different, and that’s what makes the experience unique.

Thierry Perez: Do you feel authorized to touch?

Lisa Cubaynes: No, I don’t.

Louise Contant: I have a twofold experience to share with you, linked to my diving practice. I agree with Lisa about perceiving the environment quite differently: the only place I feel completely in the present is when I dive. For me it’s a form of meditation, it’s the only moment in which I think neither of the future or of the past. My phone is out of reach, I can’t be interrupted or disturbed. This is why I feel that our senses activate differently, even if they are necessarily forced by an environment that keeps you from perceiving everything. Regarding the sense of touch, it can also be different if you are wearing gloves for example. I have touched things, but I was a little scared of doing so.

That’s the second part of the experience: I also trained as an archaeologist and I practice underwater archaeology. When you find a shipwreck, it’s a submerged artifact, not a sculpture. It’s not an underwater museum as we understand them now, but it’s a very keen, very deep emotion. With archaeology, you discover as you dig, the emotion is always renewed, even though the approach is scientific. Again, you touch in order to study, but with great caution since the materials are extremely sensitive.

Thierry Perez: Without being an underwater archaeologist, when you come across past remains there is an emotion that is at least as strong as when you visit the Acropolis in Athens for the first time. It is renewed every time. When you start diving, you enter into a continuous  quest for amphorae or remains, pipes or antique crockery. Indeed, this creates emotion. Natural heritage can also create emotion. It could be landscapes that seem exceptional and that, since you are underwater, you appreciate very differently from when they are depicted in a photograph or a painting by an artist in a predictable manner. These landscapes are artworks that also exist. An extraordinary encounter with an animal can also create specific feelings.

However, returning to what Lisa said, I’m not sure that an object that has voluntarily been placed underwater with an aim to educate, communicate, to raise awareness about art or the environment, would have any much stronger effect on our sensitivity because it is underwater. That the effect is different – I agree, and it would be good if we were able to put this emotion into words. But not necessarily more important: I believe you could feel more or less the same thing if you’re lucky enough to be alone with the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.

Juliette Bessette: Museums answer precise functions in the international community. The ICOM (International Council of Museums) defines the museum as “a not-for-profit, permanent institution in the service of society that researches, collects, conserves, interprets and exhibits tangible and intangible heritage. [...] museums foster diversity and sustainability. [...] offering varied experiences for education, enjoyment, reflection and knowledge sharing.”[1] Do you think that underwater museums answer this definition?

Thierry Perez: I’m not sure there is any need to get caught up on this notion of “museum” for these exhibition sites. On the contrary, I think we need to get to the end of that. Just as science needs to exit the laboratory, art must exit the museum. These initiatives are precisely an occasion among many others to take art out of museums and to get a certain audience into underwater environments. Indeed, they will be niche, portions of society that will be reached at a certain point in time, those brave enough to go underwater. It’s an opportunity to connect with viewers that are likely to be less erudite than regular museum-goers, and to raise their awareness about art. When, additionally, art is immersed in the environment, whether it is a marine or a forest environment, it’s also a way to link them both and to raise awareness about both of them. For that, saying “we have an underwater museum” is not necessary, rather, “we have an underwater art exhibition”.

Louise Contant: I quite agree. For me, this is a similar issue to Land Art, which is an artistic gesture that is installed in a sometimes hostile environment: the desert, the mountains, a forest, all kinds of environments. And it’s true that to connect with an audience that doesn’t usually visit museums, using the term “museum” might not be the best strategy. It might be more pertinent to accept that we’re dealing with an installation in an environment which, in places, can be freely accessed. There is a form of freedom in nature, and a form of freedom for the artworks in relation to their preservation, since they are exposed to the elements.

There have been different approaches to Land Art: some artists wish to let their works deteriorate over time, others wish them to be maintained. Sometimes natural degradation occurs, in relation to disasters for instance. I’m thinking about an installation that was partly immersed during its existence, Spiral Jetty, created by Robert Smithson in 1970 in Utah. As the name suggests, it was a sort of jetty, built in the shape of a spiral. Depending on the changing level of the lake, it was immersed a number of times and was thus degraded. The lake’s fluctuation also raises the issue of the works visibility or invisibility, which is interesting. Ultimately, these works evolve freely. Indeed, we probably shouldn’t label the word “museum”, which is very regulated, on installations or other proposals that precisely refuse norms.

Lisa Cubaynes: Apart from using the name “museum” to raise awareness about what they want to spotlight, they are also playing on the creation of present beauty in order to convince through wonder, through the sublime. This approach makes sense in the history of art because recognizing beauty and the sublime in an underwater museum – through the audience’s gaze – reveals the porousness between cultural and natural heritage. Once it is established that people’s attention has been caught, or they have been persuaded through wonder, then underwater museums allow us to ask: “what is art and is it useful? If yes, what is its use?” Underwater museums prove that art is useful, at least in their environment. They also ask “when does art happen?” It’s the viewers’ responsibility to answer that, since the approach taken by underwater museums also allows for the audience to be replaced at the center of contemporary issues in art history, the crisis of contemporary art and its accessibility, in order to include new audiences in these thought processes.

Juliette Bessette: Into what words, precisely, could the difference between these terrestrial or oceanic aesthetic experiences be put then?

Lisa Cubaynes: Perhaps more authentic...

Thierry Perez: That’s because you’re immersed...

Lisa Cubaynes: Yes, because you’re in a landscape, an environment...

Louise Contant: You’re integrated.

Lisa Cubaynes: And you participate in this environment as much as it participates in your visit. Regarding underwater museums, there’s something more authentic than with a terrestrial experience in a museum where you’re immersed in something very sterile, something very cold, walls, where everything is under control: the temperature, the humidity. The works on show are not necessarily created for a specific museum, but taken out of their environment and placed in a specific place. In the case of underwater museums the work answers the environment it has been placed in.

Thierry Perez: That said, this is true for any kind of environment, not only the aquatic. It’s the same in a forest, for example if you visit a Polynesian archaeological site in the Marquesas islands, as I was fortunate enough to. You feel roughly the same thrill without necessarily being underwater. The aquatic dimension, the fact that you’re immersed, for me, means there are important restrictions, since this is clearly a hostile environment for humans.

Louise Contant: I agree with Lisa on this true integration into the environment when you’re immersed. On land, museums are supposedly “inclusive”, accessible, etc. But here, due to the circumstances, you’re included in the environment, you’re part of it. It’s a true change. But I also agree with Thierry about the fact that this environment is risky: the constraints are hard and must be accepted, you must be able to subject to them or master them. Because of this, underwater museums are spaces reserved to a group of people who can allow themselves to be immersed.

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Thierry Perez: Yes, the experience is reserved for a population that has a certain braveness, a relationship to water that not everyone can have. In 2022 the artist Jérémie Brugidou suggested visiting Marseilles’s underwater museum at night to view his installation, Lumière de la mer (“sea light”), a work about a bio-luminescent bacteria. Going fifteen foot underwater in the middle of the night can seem hostile. This is the case for different aquatic environments which, depending on how they are made up, even if they are relatively accessible, can be just as hostile. On a reef, at night, there are sharks, moray eels, many animals that sting and bite and that can come to visit you. Going to view artworks in that kind of case is a very particular process.

Lisa Cubaynes: Underwater museums have an inclusive aspect, in that there aren’t really any borders to cross in order to get to them, since they are accessed from the coast, from a beach. At the same time, not everyone can go there, following what Thierry just said, but also in respect to physical condition: they are restricted for certain disabilities, ear pressure or fear of the sea. There is a limit to this inclusivity that is conditioned by the underwater environment. At the same time, these museums also answer to an audience that terrestrial institutions don’t manage to include. Things are not set in stone and underwater museums could well develop a terrestrial area where they would share underwater life, a kind of terrestrial mediation for those who cannot go under.

Juliette Bessette: Do these underwater museums have any interest in conserving biodiversity or do they only allow to raise awareness?

Thierry Perez: These reefs do not restore anything. They create biodiversity and habitats that didn’t exist before. Whatever you put in the water, just like when you throw something away in the forest, you would see certain forms of life develop around it — unless whatever it was was toxic. But in no way is this restoration and in no way measures by which to protect or preserve the environment. It is only creating something, which is good enough already. But the public or the policymakers shouldn’t be deceived on this account.

When a substrate is well chosen, when it doesn’t pollute and on top of that it carries a certain aesthetic, when it’s immersed it will concentrate a mobile fauna that will probably be much easier to see for any bathers than if they had to go and look for it out at sea. As time goes by, different colored organisms, like sponges or coral, colonize these new substrates and contribute to the work’s evolution. That’s what’s interesting about the interaction.

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Juliette Bessette: Heritage is a concept at the very center of the definition of the museum. In the museum world, natural heritage is mainly dealt with through so-called natural science collections. Yet UNESCO's definition of natural heritage is much broader.[2] Do underwater museums allow us to think of marine biodiversity as heritage?

Louise Contant: If we were to compare underwater museums to the conservation of natural heritage or biodiversity, we could say that the underwater museum is the complete opposite of a natural history museum: it really is a structure that that gives biodiversity a living base to thrive, whereas if it’s placed in a natural history museum it is conversely frozen in time.

Thierry Perez: That said, natural heritage, in my opinion, isn’t found in Paris’ Natural History museum or any other. It is in nature and especially not in a museum. You could assimilate a natural history collection to scientific heritage but absolutely not natural heritage.

Lisa Cubaynes: Jason deCaires Taylor, the artist who created the world’s first underwater museums, justifies the term “museum” to showcase this natural heritage and, through this association with artistic creation, consider ecosystems and biodiversity that equally count as creations. In Italy, a fisherman who wanted to fight industrial fishing decided to place blocks of marble underwater, close to Talamone in Tuscany: the place is named la Casa dei Pesci. He didn’t just stop at immersing blocks of marble, because he know that wouldn’t alert anyone or raise awareness about the natural heritage. What he did was to hire artists to sculpt the marble. Through the presence of art and this loose form of “museum,” it caught people’s as well as television cameras’ attention. If there had been no art, perhaps there would have been less attention: perhaps the use of the word “museum” or the word “art” can raise extra awareness about this natural heritage.

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Juliette Bessette: What is demonstrated through these museums is an optimistic vision of the future connections between humans and the ocean. However, regarding environmental degradation, we could refer to marine biodiversity as a heritage on fire. What do you think about this?

Thierry Perez: There are different ways to note our planet’s state of conservation in general. Some imagine finding another, liveable planet and others who, more serenely, see what we are still able to achieve, based on what has already been done. Many things have been improved these past thirty to forty years in terms of protecting the ocean. Today, many measures are technically possible and can produce positive effects in the short term and at local, regional and national levels. Based on those examples, discourse about these matters can absolutely be positive and show that once damage is brought to a halt, nature recovers and that can be amazing. I believe we can share this optimistic rhetoric with lucidity and reason.

Louise Contant: This also has to do with existential questions about art, because art isn’t always positive or beautiful. On the other hand, studying, inventorying, documenting, publishing or making accessible, communicating about what is at stake participates in raising awareness and therefore in filling people with wonder. It is perhaps a shared logic between natural and cultural heritage. It is a way to put the world into words and these stories help to transform society, to face change and to reinvent ourselves.

Lisa Cubaynes: Underwater museums count on collective intelligence. They start from the premise that we’ve seen enough pessimistic art, especially in art linked to the anthropocene. Their intention is to act as mediums to ease the transition between wonder, awareness and involvement in protecting the environment or in our small, everyday gestures. Their mission is to create environmental sensitivities that implicate the public, in this case towards marine biodiversity. New ways of raising awareness, of which there are few on earth.

Juliette Bessette: What place do your emotions for the ocean occupy in your professional life? And if they do, how do you articulate them with your activity or scientific production? Is it conflictual?

Thierry Perez: I’m not a very good example of a scientist. I have ideas for research projects that can be quite unreasonable, but that fascinate me, that wake me up at night. I’m lucky enough to lead some of them, to tell a few stories about somewhat outlandish ideas, for instance going to collect the molecules produced by sea sponges and seeing how they help crustaceans to orient themselves in the dark. It’s really cool, but science isn’t always like that. I’m a bit of a special case.

Then, depending on your profession there’s naturally the question of fieldwork, like for Louise who works in underwater archaeology. In marine ecology research, this concerns only a few scholars. But going into an underwater cave for the first time, discovering contingents of new species, touching organisms that no one after you might ever touch, is an insane   emotion. There are ecosystems that you can enter, where it feels like you’re communing with nature, sometimes when you’re alone with a big shark or a big ray swimming around you and thinking that you might be among the last who will experience this: being able to do that is a unique opportunity, a unique emotion. That’s for those lucky enough to do fieldwork. I think the intensity of your emotion depends a lot on how you practice science. This is my way — going into the field and not sitting at my desk — but perhaps I’m a special example compared to the norm.

Louise Contant: I also get very emotional in my practice when it starts — like for Thierry — through intuition. And no doubt Lisa too, you are intuitive about your practice as an art historian. When you manage to develop a project starting from an intuition and that others connect with it, when it has an impact, say through an exhibition at a museum. When you invite an audience to look at a subject in a new way, the notion of what it is to share is profound.

Lisa Cubaynes: I share these opinions. I would even say that it is the presence of these strong emotions on these subjects that show us that studying and showcasing them is necessary. The emotions I feel thanks to the ocean aren’t conflictual in relation to what I produce as an art historian — on the contrary, they create empirical bases that unite with theoretical knowledge in order to build my research around underwater museums.

Translated from French by Matilda Holloway.

Notes

[1] "Museum Definition." International Council of Museums. https://icom.museum/en/resources/standards-guidelines/museum-definition/ 

[2] “Natural heritage refers to natural features, geological and physiographical formations and delineated areas that constitute the habitat of threatened species of animals and plants and natural sites of value from the point of view of science, conservation or natural beauty. It includes private and publically protected natural areas, zoos, aquaria and botanical gardens, natural habitat, marine ecosystems, sanctuaries, reservoirs etc.” Natural Heritage definition, UNESCO, 2009. URL: https://uis.unesco.org/en/glossary-term/natural-heritage 

Cover image: Floriane Lisowski, Octo-Cérébrum® MSM, low-carbon cement and 3D printing. Immersed in Marseille's Underwater Musem for World Oceans Day in June 2024.

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