Jakob Kudsk Steensen spent five years building Psychosphere, a psychosphere deep-sea installation that places visitors inside a former water reservoir beneath Copenhagen. The work drew on deep-sea footage shot by Steensen and by the research groups he worked with. It was exhibited at Cisternerne, part of The Frederiksberg Museums, in 2025.
The central question is simple to state and difficult to answer. Who, or what, has agency? Steensen traces an answer back to the volcanic vents where life is thought to have begun.
A theory of the psyche
The project builds on the work of writer and theorist Melanie Challenger, who developed the concept of the psychosphere. Her idea treats the psyche as the feature that separates living beings from matter. In a text written for the exhibition, she states the core point: “The most obvious answer is that living beings do things for reasons.”
Rock and water react, degrade, and grow passively under outside forces. Animals, by contrast, have distinct mechanisms for survival. Challenger proposes seeing the world “as a psychosphere (my word) of diverse agents” rather than as a biosphere of genetic resources.
That shift changes what people value, she argues. Her model does not place humans at the center. Challenger acknowledges that people have caused severe environmental damage, and she describes each organism as a place where meaning exists, so that “every living being becomes a self.”
Challenger’s idea that every organism carries its own meaning invites comparison with living wonders found in the wild, such as Giant Waterlily Species Found in Colombia, a plant discovery that reminds readers how much remains unknown.
Inside the psychosphere deep-sea installation
The Cisternerne is cold and damp, and it suits this psychosphere deep-sea installation well. Condensation has pooled across the floor, so the moving images on the screens reflect in still water. Walking through its arches feels like entering another wet world, close to the one playing on the screens.
In an interview with the museum, Steensen describes this mirroring as “a parallel world beneath.”
He recalls diving, when the bubbles from his breath rose above him and formed a mirror of the world he was exploring. That memory shaped the installation’s reflective logic.
Steensen filmed some of the footage on dives between the Azores and the Aeolian Islands. Through a collaboration with the research vessel REV Ocean/REV Aurora, he also recorded underwater volcanic landforms and marine fossils.
Three sculptural groups occupy the space of this psychosphere deep-sea installation. Abiogenesis commands the room as a single freestanding form. Orogeny is a set of interactive glass sculptures inspired by deserts that were once covered by seas. Amorphous, made of resin and fiberglass, takes its shapes from Steensen’s sketches and from extinct sea lily specimens.
From Copenhagen to the United Nations
After Copenhagen, the work travelled to the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference, presented with ArtExplora. There the deep-sea installation was adapted into an immersive LED tunnel, designed to extend the conversation about protecting the deep sea.
The timing carries weight. Interest in deep-sea mining has grown, and a movement has emerged to widen rights for the organisms that live in these depths. Its principle is a duty to protect all species, rather than placing resource extraction ahead of environmental protection.
Life beyond the human
Abiogenesis, as Steensen puts it, is “the belief in the origin of life as something that evolved from non-organic matter billions of years ago, under the high pressures and gases of deep-sea volcanoes.” The idea anchors the whole psychosphere deep-sea installation.
If the ocean is a world of interconnected beings, the same watery theme appears in Behnaz Farahi’s Oceanic Design at MIT, an installation that also blends marine imagery with ideas about how we communicate with the sea.
The psychosphere deep-sea installation asks visitors to recognize the agency and significance of organisms beyond the human. Its ocean is a world of interconnected beings, each with its own form of existence. The installation leaves a sharper question behind: if other living things hold their own purposes, what do we owe them?
Sources & Links
Source: designboom.com
Frequently asked questions
Where was the Psychosphere deep-sea installation exhibited?
Psychosphere was exhibited at Cisternerne, part of The Frederiksberg Museums, in Copenhagen in 2025. It sits inside a former water reservoir beneath the city.
What is Melanie Challenger’s concept of the psychosphere?
Melanie Challenger’s concept treats the psyche as the feature that separates living beings from matter. She proposes seeing the world as a psychosphere of diverse agents rather than a biosphere of genetic resources, which she argues changes what people value.
Where did the Psychosphere installation travel after Copenhagen?
After Copenhagen, the work travelled to the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference, presented with ArtExplora. There it was adapted into an immersive LED tunnel to extend the conversation about protecting the deep sea.
What does abiogenesis mean in the Psychosphere installation?
Steensen describes abiogenesis as the belief that life evolved from non-organic matter billions of years ago, under the high pressures and gases of deep-sea volcanoes. The idea anchors the whole installation and is presented as a freestanding sculptural form in the space.
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