The series began in 2001 in Costa Rica,
when I used battery-powered black lights and
bed-sheets placed in the jungle floor to see
what would be attracted. Almost instantly
numerous species of moths, beetles, mantids,
scorpions, and other arthropods descended
on the installation. I was so inspired that the
next night I recreated the experiment but this
time invited others to come watch. After, I
began developing complex sculptural forms and
public nocturnal field trips around the world.
To date, versions of the project have debuted
on boats in Venice, Irish peat bogs, Scottish
moors overlooking Loch Ness, a bustling
Delhi shopping mall, along side Aztec ruins in
Mexico, an inner-city bus stop in New Haven,
urban roof tops in London, temperate forest
mountainsides in South Korea, a bayou in New
Orleans, and most recently in NYC’s Central
Park.
SAiA: In 2012 you exhibited a large installation
made with thousands of preserved specimens
that responded to the Deepwater Horizon Oil
Spill at Feldman Gallery in NY; can you talk
about this project?
BB: The 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon
(DWH) oil spill was the largest environmental
disaster in the history of the United States.
The installation Collapse responded to the
unraveling of the Gulf of Mexico’s food-chain
following the spill and use of teratological
dispersants used to “clean” the oil. Physically,
Collapse was a pyramid display of hundreds of
preserved fish, other aquatic organisms, and
DWH contaminates in gallon jars. It was meant
to recall the fragile inter-trophic relationships
between Gulf species, and the way the spill
may have altered this. There were over 20,000
specimens in the piece—from huge deep sea
roaches (isopods), to oil stained shrimp with
no eyes, to jars packed with tiny sea snails. It
was really meant as a sketch, literally less than 5
percent of the biodiversity of the Gulf.
Empty containers represented species in
decline as a result of the disaster; visually
this was a way to frame absence and suggest
the ecosystem collapse. The piece was made
in collaboration with fellow biologists Todd
Gardner, Jack Rudloe, and Peter Warny and
with my former student artist Brian Schiering.
It took us two years to gather data, Gulf
specimens, and other samples.
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the
most