Artivist Series - Suzette Bousema
visual artist
Suzette Bousema has breathed in air from 20,000 years ago. She is an emerging Netherlands-based visual artist. Suzette collaborates with environmental scientists to explore present day ecological crises. She engages audiences by using a variety of techniques including photography, glass blowing, and weaving to create experiences for our senses and assist us in wrapping our minds around big, abstract concepts. Suzette has garnered attention through international exhibitions and media coverage in such places as the Netherlands, New York, Kuwait, and France. On the podcast we discuss her project to photograph ancient polar ice cores, create her own climate archive with glass bubbles, and an engaging photograph she took of two men in business attire standing in the ocean. This photograph is Suzette’s way to engage her audience in a conversation about sea level rise and more.
Video conversation with Suzette…click here
What Suzette talks about…
Suzette wanted to become a veterinarian when she was in high school but her grades prevented her from doing so she took a different career path and the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands. For her graduation project she wanted to do something related to global warming. Using the Internet she located a scientist who worked with ice cores. One thing led to another and she found herself photographing 20,000 year old ice core samples from Antarctica. This project led her to create her own CO2 climate archives using glass blowing and scientific techniques to monthly capture samples of air. While Suzette work has garnered attention through international exhibitions and media coverage in such places as the Netherlands, New York, Kuwait, and France, and she has worked in many media our conversation focuses on ice cores, glass bubbles, and an engaging photo she took representing the climate crisis.
Making art helps Suzette get a grip on huge and often abstract topics. By trying to visualize them she is trying to relate by focusing on smaller details on something she can actually manage to deal with.
Show Notes
00:00:01 Pamela Ferris-Olson Today on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series on womenmindthewater.com, I am speaking with Suzette Bousema, a Netherlands-based visual artist. Suzette focuses on ecological crises and collaborates with environmental scientists. She engages audiences by using a variety of techniques including photography, glass blowing and weaving to create experiences that engage our senses and assist us in wrapping our minds around big abstract concepts.
00:00:35 The Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast on womenmindthewater.com engages artists in conversation about their work and explores their connection with the ocean.
Through their stories, Wo(men) Mind the Water hopes to inspire and encourage action to protect the ocean and her creatures.
I am speaking with Suzette Bousema, an emerging visual artist based in the Netherlands. She has garnered attention through international exhibitions and media coverage in such places as the Netherlands, New York, Kuwait and France. She tackles the subject of climate change through her art. In one of her projects, she photographs ice cores collected in Antarctica and Greenland.
The bubbles trapped in the ice cores document the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Some of the bubbles are tens of thousands of years old.
00:01:33 Welcome Suzette. I am grateful to Tracy Metz, another Dutch artist and an earlier guest on the Wo(men) Mind the Water Artivist Series podcast, for introducing me to your work. I'd like to spend much of our time together exploring the subject of ice cores and air bubbles. Let's begin by learning a bit about you and how you became interested in climate change. Help us understand how you became interested in art as a means to explore such a big subject.
00:02:06 Suzette Bousema Well, thank you for the invitation. I'm really happy to be speaking with you about my art. Yeah, how did I grow up? I've always lived by the sea. I live in The Hague in the Netherlands. I think you can see in my projects that they're often related to the sea. For example, for the air catching or the air archive projects, I go to the beach.
00:02:43 Actually I wanted to become a veterinarian when I was in high school but because of some circumstances, like not having high enough grades, I couldn't enter. Another career path was more on the creative side. So I went into art school. Later my fascinations came together and I started making projects about environmental topics.
00:03:14 Pamela Ferris-Olson So you attended the Royal Academy of Art in the Netherlands. How did you come to work with scientists who collect ice? Maybe you could start by describing what an ice core is.
00:03:27 Suzette Bousema An ice core is actually a tubular sample of ice that scientists drill out of the ice sheets on Antarctica. They use a really big machine and kind of make a hole in the ice and then take it up. Then what you see is a lot of layers that go back in time, almost like a book. And actually what you see are very tiny bubbles which are air bubbles that are captured over time. And the way these are formed is by layers of snow. The layers of snow every year add pressure. The weight is actually causing the snow to form into ice. And the air that had been between the snowflakes is now trapped inside the ice as air bubbles. So that's what they dig up when they're doing research. And they can use these ice cores to research the history of climate change. Currently, until about 800,000 years ago. But I think there is now a project where they are trying to go even deeper. Yeah, cores that go back 2,000,000 years ago.
00:04:45 Pamela Ferris-Olson Well, how does somebody who goes to the Academy of Art to study art end up working with scientists collecting ice cores?
00:04:53 Suzette Bousema Well, I knew for my graduation project I wanted to do something with global warming. And I knew that the place where it has the most effect or where the effects of climate change is most visible were the ice caps on the North Pole and the South Pole, especially Greenland where the sea ice is melting very rapidly.
00:05:20 I wanted to know more about it. And then I thought I want to collaborate with the scientist. So actually it was very new to me because of course I was still a student. And yeah, how do you go about it? I actually just googled like: scientist, climate, the Netherlands and Antarctica or something like that. And then someone came up who is actually also the weatherman of the Netherlands. One of the weatherman on the television. And he was also a polar researcher. So I contacted him. Actually it's really nice that all the scientists, they actually work as lecturers at the universities and all have their email on the websites. So it's actually really easy to email them. Very convenient. So that's what I did.
00:06:11 Pamela Ferris-Olson So when did you first see ice cores up close? Did you actually travel to one of the sites of collection?
00:06:19 Suzette Bousema No, I actually first thought I would need to go there. I wanted to go there because how amazing is it to go to the Antarctica or something like that? But then again, I was graduating and within three months or something, I had to have a project. So there was some time pressure. And then I got in contact with the scientist. He told me about his research and that they have in the University of Utrecht where he works, they have a walk in freezer. It's actually a whole room that they keep under -30°C, so very deep freeze. And they have boxes of ice cores there that they have been keeping there since I was born.
00:07:12 Pamela Ferris-Olson Wow. You just walk into a freezer in some city, and there are these ice cores! So you didn't photograph the whole core, you photographed sections, correct?
00:07:27 Suzette Bousema Yeah, I photograph a little slice from the middle. They actually have a saw in the freezer. They have a saw to sometimes make slices, but they usually have a core and make slices like this to them [Suzette demonstrates with her hands cutting the core like a sausage]. But I wanted to make a slice through the middle [she demonstrates slicing the long way] because then you have the whole.
00:07:50 Pamela Ferris-Olson So what technical issues did you encounter photographing the cores in basically a walk in ice chest?
00:08:00 Suzette Bousema So to photograph them, you actually need to let them melt a little bit. You can imagine that when you have block of ice in your freezer, it's like white from the. cold. But when you put it in a glass of water and it starts to melt, it becomes see through and that's actually what I needed to do in order to photograph it and let the bubbles reflect the light. So I took it out of the freezer and I waited until it was going to melt and then when it started to get see through I started photographing. I used flash from behind. So actually a lot of the photograph is black because that's where the shadow is. And actually the only thing you see in the photographs are the bubbles. So you don't actually see the ice in the photographs.
00:08:51 Pamela Ferris-Olson So they didn't mind the little slice that you took was going to melt?
00:08:57 Suzette Bousema Well, actually in the beginning it was very hard because they didn't want to give me an ice core because I was a student. Like I said they’ve kept if for like 25 years for scientific purposes. So they were not really planning to give some ice cores to a random person. But then I started to come more often, and like every time I went back to look I’d ask: “Oh and what's in that box and what is in that box? And then in the end there was one box that they didn't archive very well. They did know that it was from Antarctica from the coordinates but there were some data that they didn't record well in their computer so they couldn't really use them [the data]. Then I got to have those ice cores.
00:09:51 Pamela Ferris-Olson Well, I have to say that your persistence paid off. What kind of technical issues did you encounter in photographing the cores?
00:10:01 Suzette Bousema It's very difficult to photograph something that's melting, especially if it's a block of like this like [demonstrates with her hands] like 10 by 20 centimeters and like a centimeter thick. Every time I stuck it into some kind of thing to hold it standing up because I needed to have it placed somewhere to be able to photograph it. But every time it melted and fell down. So every time I photographed it, it was slowly going down again.
00:10:37 Pamela Ferris-Olson So as you photographed these sections, did you see anything that surprised you?
00:10:42 Suzette Bousema Of course, the bubbles tare trapped in the ice. But as it's melting slowly, some bubbles are released because they are just trapped in a wall of ice. And then you hear the bubbles popping open.
00:10:56 Pamela Ferrris-Olson Really, you hear them popping?
00:10:57 Suzette Bousema Yeah, yeah. You hear like, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Because the ice is melting and the air is released. So. Yeah it's kind of fascinating because the ice cores that I photographed were 20,000 years old. So you're breathing in Antarctic air of that time, which is really crazy to imagine.
00:11:18 Pamela Ferris-Olson So how does it feel? How do you feel when you realize that you're breathing air that is from thousands of years ago?
00:11:24 Suzette Bousema Yeah, it's really crazy. Only actually, when you think about it, all the air that is here has been here already, for eternity; only the composition is a bit different. Actually the air that you're breathing right now is also ancient air if you think about it.
00:11:42 Pamela Ferris-Olson You have another project that involves the bubbles, but this time you're blowing your own glass bubbles and the glass bubbles you create contain air that you've collected from pre-selected sites. I believe your intention is to create an archive of air that exists today, similar to the way the air is trapped in the ice core.s How do you go about collecting the air and even more interesting, how do you get it inside the glass bubble?
00:12:12 Suzette Bousema Well, I brought one to show you. So it's a bit easier to explain. The idea was actually that, you know, the air in the ice sheets is like a climate archive of their history.
And if global warming continues, the air of our generation might not be captured in ice or it might be captured, but soon released with the melting and that layer of our history will not be archived. So I began speculating about that and for that reason I wanted to start my own archive.
I wanted to continue with the archive of Antarctica, so I thought I have to go there every month to capture the air there. But of course that's not really sustainable to make a trip every time just to collect some air. I told this to the scientist. What do you think? And then asked if maybe I could do it here?
00:13:18 He said, “well, if it's about the CO2 concentration, you can do it at any place in the world where the air is coming from a relatively clean place. So, for example, when you're standing at the seashore and the air is coming from sea, it is very well mixed already.” CO2 is a very well mixed gas. Whenever you're at a clean place, it's almost the same as in Antarctica.
So that gave me the option that I can do it here near my home.
00:13:53 Pamela Ferris-Olson I can see you could use something like a turkey baster or whatever to suck the air. But then how do you get that air into your glass bubble?
00:14:05 Suzette Bousema The system I use is to blow the bubble first and then I put it on this stick which actually has a vacuum system [Suzette holds up a glass bubble on a pipette]. So you can see that now it's open and now it's closed [demonstrates moving a glass valve on the pipette].
I suck out the air with my mouth and then a slight vacuum is created, then I can close it and go to the beach where I open it. You hear the air at that exact moment go in. I close it again. With a torch I melt the end and the closed bubble is filled with the air from that exact moment at the beach.
00:14:56 Pamela Ferris-Olson Well, thank you for explaining and even more interesting showing us. It's really interesting that you've taken scientific research and moved it into the artistic realm. Do you think you're glass bubble project can be extended beyond the artistic and into the scientific?
00:15:17 Suzette Bousema I'm not sure if they [scientists] will actually use it because it's not an official measurement like they do, but I do capture two bubbles every month. The idea is that one bubble I can use for presentations and exhibitions and the second bubble is for scientific research in the future. So yeah they can use it. They can break it open in 20 years or whenever.
00:15:46 Pamela Ferris-Olson That's really exciting. You're contributing to the knowledge, which is really why I guess you call your glass bubbles “climate archives”. You have them for sale on your website. Each bubble comes with the location and date of where the air was collected and where the sample inside represents. What message or connection do you hope people get by owning a climate archive bubble?
00:16:20 Suzette Bousema Well, the idea was really to see how I can involve my audience more into the project. And I think by making people an archivist or a keeper of the archive, they get a very important role because they are they are actually safeguarding that specific part of the archive. And if it breaks, then we don't have it anymore. So I think this gives some kind of responsibility to the person.
00:16:53 Pamela Ferris-Olson So I'm going to change direction just a little bit because one of the things I find most interesting is a photograph you took back in 2018. And for those in our audience who can't see the photo, it shows two men standing chest deep in the ocean. Both men are wearing white shirts and dark ties. Suzette, what is the story behind this really intriguing photograph?
00:17:18 Suzette Bousema It was for an event for an insurance company. They were holding an event about global warming and how global warming would affect their policies. I’m not sure but the event was called Head above the Water. So how do we keep our head above the water? as I was just very inspired that all these men in business suits were talking about how they can kind of make it better for them, I guess. So I came up with this idea of photography two men in suits in the water with their head just above the water. It was actually a very stormy day so the clouds were very nice and dark.
00:18:11 Pamela Ferris-Olson Very engaging. How did you find two people that were willing to stand in cold water during a stormy day?
00:18:19 Suzette Bousema In the Netherlands, we have this Facebook group called “models and photographers”. Whenever somebody needs like a volunteer, you can ask there. The older guy comes from that platform and the younger guy is a friend of mine.
00:18:36 Pamela Ferris-Olson Ohh, very nice. Definitely a lot of what you do has been courtesy of the Internet. Given the enormity of the issues related to climate change and its consequences for life on Earth, what advice can you offer to listeners who are experiencing climate crisis anxiety?
00:18:56 Suzette Bousema Yeah, that's a really hard one for me. Making these art projects helps me to try at least to get a grip on these huge topics and abstract topics. By trying to visualize it or to give it some kind of embodiment. I'm trying to make a way to relate to it better. So I guess what I'm doing is focusing on very small details of the bigger issue or like a specific effect.
To narrow down maybe and to focus on something that you can actually manage.
00:19:36 Pam Ferris-Olson I fully understand. That's what I'm trying to do with this podcast. It’s fascinating to talk to people, archivists who are handling these issue in different ways. It helps them feel that they're doing something of significance or at least they're moving forward for themselves and hopefully providing people who have anxiety with another way to see how they can deal with it or how other women are dealing with it. And I have to say, I respect the energy with which you are exploring these difficult topics and look forward to hearing more in the future about your work.
I'd like to remind listeners that I've been speaking with Netherlands-based, Suzette Bosma. Suzette is the latest guest on the Wo(men) Mind the water Artivist podcasts. The series can be viewed on womenmyunderwater.com, Museum on Main Street, and YouTube. An audio-only version of this podcast is available on womenunderwater.com, on iTunes and Spotify.
Wo(men) Mind the Water is grateful to Jaine Rice for the use of her song Women of Water. All rights for the Wo(men) Mind the Water name and logo belongs to Pam Ferris-Olson. This is Pam Ferris-Olson.