Mollastica Suit

Contributors | Xin Liu and Yao Yu

Impenetrable darkness, extreme pressure, cold water, and disorienting equilibrium: deep-sea creatures live in a world that is closer to outer space than Earth’s land. The world of the deep swallows and transforms all: organism, lava, plastic. If we mistake the deep ocean for empty, it is only because its fullness is just beyond the limits of our eyes. Home is a thin membrane above sea level and under atmosphere. When we fly into space or dive to the ocean floor, the fabric of spacetime folds us into one darkness.

Where ocean and outer space connect, we meet Mollastica.

Collaborating with fashion designer Yao Yu, Xin Liu creates a mollusk costume of Mollastica, which “swallows” strips of cloth made from Parley’s Ocean Plastic yarn. The costume grew in zero gravity during our 2019 parabolic flight performance. Simultaneously, the body performance was captured in 3D by the Microsoft Azura system for a video piece in development.