Léa Sisombat: The Ocean as Medium. Jürgen Claus’s exploration of ecological art through »Planet Ocean«

Artists as divers, underwater cameras, sculptures carried by the current: Since the late 1960s, artist Jürgen Claus has explored the ocean as a habitat and a place of creativity. Léa Sisombat, recipient of the Jürgen Claus Fellowship, presents the findings of her master’s thesis on his pioneering underwater projects. In doing so, she explores his question: »What is the ocean as a medium?«

From the 1960s onward, Jürgen Claus (1935–2023) was one of the key figures in ecologically oriented media art. He achieved international recognition through his underwater art projects, solar sculptures, and theoretical writings, in which he explored the relationship between art, technology, and ecology. Since 2021, a substantial part of his artistic estate has been preserved in the collection and archive of ZKM, providing an exceptional foundation for new research on his work. 

From the late 1960s until his death in 2023, the underwater artist continuously explored the concept of the ocean as a creative experience. Nearly half a century after conceiving his lifelong artistic project »Planet Ocean«, Jürgen Claus posed a fundamental question in his final two publications: »What is the ocean as a medium?«

In her master's thesis, Léa Sisombat seeks to answer this question by examining the distinction and the interplay between the concepts of »creative experience« and »medium.« Structured in three parts, the thesis investigates the ocean as a subject, as an environment, and ultimately as a medium in relation to Claus’s artistic practice.

Léa Sisombat is a final-year master’s student in »Global History of Contemporary Art« at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Her academic profile combines art history with media theory, sound studies, and intensive archival research.