Transcriber: Anna Pasqualetto Reviewer: Mafalda Ferreira
To buy endlessly, we need to throw out endlessly.
And this requires a highly effective waste system.
In fact, capitalism depends on the slick removal of unwanted goods,
and the waste time and space are often worth more than commodities,
leading to a culture of throw away and buy again
rather than repair and be used.
Imagine if we could never throw anything away.
We’d slowly be ousted from our homes by our purchases
as we pile up one delivery box upon another.
I'm keenly aware of this problem,
and even I’m shocked to see how many soft toys
my children can surreptitiously over the years.
Though I must say they make great use of the cardboard boxes.
As official artists, we make things, so we’re certainly part of this problem.
The artist, Michael Landy, create an installation called ???
where he invited artists to throw away their unwanted and unloved artworks.
I can tell you as a sculptor that storage is one of my biggest headaches.
Over 20 years ago, already perturbed by this problem,
I created an installation called Transparent Room,
which conceptually removed the gallery.
I filmed the views through the walls and ceiling of the galleries,
and we played these within the space.
These films were enlarged and sped up over time
until images became entirely abstract.
Rather than exhibit objects in the gallery,
my work invited the viewer to look around and appreciate
the every day spaces which surround them.
More recently, I’ve begun to explore
how people dump illegally their unwanted goods.
I’ve worked with divers to recover bicycles,
shopping trolleys and other detritus from canals across Europe.
I take these objects and I record the sounds they make
to create a composition which plays alongside the objects
standind unilluminated on the surface of the water.
Just like the municipal waste system,
throwing things in the canal makes them invisible.
Imagine if at the end of every street,
you had to watch your waste accumulate
for the period of, let’s say, a month before it’s removed.
Would you think a little bit more about what you bought and what you threw away?
I take these objects and I make them visible again
to demonstrate that they don’t just simply disappear
when we let go of them.
Since the age of imperialism and industrial revolution,
consumption has risen exponentially in the West,
leading to catastrophic climate change and rising sea levels.
I wanted to show people in London how this would impact on their city
by simply marking a line
where this sea level would be in a thousand of years.
My first thoughts were to draw this blue line across the seascape,
but on reflection I realized I could make just as powerful a statement
by bobering existing monuments to make parasitical artworks.
This repurposing of public sculpture was not only just efficient
from a practical point of view,
but questioned the whole legacy of these icons.
To pay for the grand old Duke of York monument seen here,
every single British soldier had to forgo a day's wages.
Needless to say, no matter how high the sea level rises,
this old man will always be safe.
Not the same can be said for some of the poorest countries
and fragile ecologies in the world.
I was lucky enough to be invited to make a new commission in Norway
to be studied by a group of environmental psychologists
to ascertain whether I could indeed change people’s perceptions of climate change.
Coming from London, I was struck by the contrast
between the pristine Norwegian air and the polluted air of my home city,
and this made me reflect on how countries like Norway
have benefited so hugely from global commerce.
They have exported vast quantities of oil
and on that basis can now import goods from around the world
without suffering any of the negative consequences
associated with the production of these goods.
It’s all too easy to blame countries like China
on their large carbon footprint and their polluting industries,
when we have outsourced nearly all of our production.
Children in China breathe toxic air
so children here can play with toys that are far too cheap.
This made me think about air itself, is so intangible and so omnipresent,
and yet nothing is more fundamental for sustaining our lives.
I want to use air as an autistic material, and to these ends,
I started to recreate air from locations around the world.
The pristine Norwegian air and,
and by contrast, the polluted air of London, São Paulo, Beijing
and possibly the most polluted air in the world, New Delhi.
With the help of the fragrance house IFF,
I worked with perfumers who lived in these places
to accurately recreate the smells, humidity,
temperature and visibility of these locations.
Critical to the success of this project
was a stark contrast between the atmospheres within each door.
We all tend to habituate to a living conditions
and become slowly desensitized to environments.
However, within the pollution pods,
you could travel from one continent to another in just a few seconds,
leaving no time to acclimatise to the new environment.
The Norwegian’s reaction to my installation was visceral.
They simply could not believe anyone could live in an air
as polluted as New Delhi’s.
Just this year, I was invited by Skylar's to create a new public sculpture
for their CV’s called Landmark.
It’s a sort of bake-off for artists.
I decided not to make a permanent sculpture.
Surely we shouldn’t even be thinking about permanence
when our whole future is in such jeopardy.
Instead, I chose to make a temporary and mobile artwork,
which reduced the amount of carbon released into the environment,
a climate positive sculpture.
My choice of materials keeps the carbon locked in.
The framework is constructed from a single English oak tree
and many of the elements used in the sculpture are modular,
allowing them to be easily reused and repurposed,
such as these boxes designed by Studio Bark,
for which I built the seating
and support the oak saplings, which I plant in situ after every show.
Each of these trees, when mature, can sequester up to a ton of carbon a year.
Underneath the sculpture, the Sphagnum moss carpet will become a peat bog,
which can hold carbon for millennia.
The only carbon heavy material is the copper used to build the roof,
and this is simply being penned in place to allow it to be easily recycled
when the sculpture’s no longer needed,
The inverted conical roof and supporting fence
naturally exaggerate the sound to the weather.
And perched on top of the sculpture
is a small weather station which activate sound files,
which subtly augment the local weather conditions.
So when it’s drizzling, it sounds like it’s raining.
When it’s raining, you hear rolling thunder at distance.
When it's breezy, it sounds like it's windy.
For those within the sculpture, their experience of the weather is exaggerated,
giving them the uncanny sense of what the weather will be like
in the near future.
Over the years, I’ve started to think of my art as a service, not a product,
I’m interested in what we can share collectively.
And for this reason, the public realm and the public museum
are the focus of my work,
not the private collector or the commercial gallery.
I see my projects swimming against the prevailing tide
of neo liberal politics.
Art can and should change people’s lives
and question the narrative the unfettered economic growth
it’s a global panacea.
With the festive season now upon us
and some of the best creative minds employed to seduce us with that farce,
we need now more than ever to make us pause
and ask the question:
Do we really need this?
before we push that button “By now”.
(Aplausos)