Bloodline · The Modern Fleet

Negative Space stages Bloodline – a naval study and exhibition in progress by Jacob Hägg, placed in direct dialogue with the 19th-century maritime paintings and hydrographic charts of his direct ancestor and namesake, Rear-Admiral Jacob (Jacques) Hägg (1839–1931).

Across five generations, two Jacobs work the same Baltic horizon: the first in oil, copperplate etching and soundings; the second in SI image systems, design and code.

Born at Katthamra Gård on Gotland in 1839, Rear-Admiral Jacob Hägg served aboard the frigate Vanadis and the corvettes Josephine and Gefle, charted Swedish waters at Sjökarteverket (1874–1884) and founded Sweden’s first secret military navigation-aid system (militärledssystem).

Alongside naval command at Sjökrigsskolan and Karlskrona, he produced some 700 marine oils and watercolours, over 1,600 drawings and founded the collection that became Sjöhistoriska Museet in Stockholm.

In the Negative Space projection room, a contemporary vessel of leisure capital and a 19th-century rigged hull share a single fogged farvatten.

Where the admiral drew secret coastal bearings by hand so warships could thread the archipelago without lighthouses, Studio Super Intelligence writes custom optical and spatial instruments to navigate synthetic scale.