contemporary art magazine issue # sixteen december ... - Karyn Olivier

Jeppe Hein, 360° Presence, 2002 - courtesy: Johann König, Berlin, photo: Ludger Paffrath
MOUSSE / CLIMATE IS CLIMATE IS CLIMATE? / PAG. 48
ball. They have lost plaster and paint; wall plugs and baseboards
have been damaged. With the installation 360º Presence (2002),
Danish artist Jeppe Hein has succeeded in creating a poignant
parable of the climatic catastrophe. Like the cell of the white
cube, our global ecological system is a closed system; in both
cases, it is the human being, who slowly but surely is bringing
the system to total collapse through his own activity. The latest
data from the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)
shows that CO2 emissions will soon result in an increase of
the average temperature on Earth by more than 2°C. There is
no doubt that this intensive global warming will result in the
so-called “runaway greenhouse effect” – if it hasn’t happened
already.
The world as a closed system is similarly addressed in Tue
Greenfort’s installation Plant Oil Circulation – After Hans Haacke
1969 (2007). The piece immediately echoes Hans Haacke’s
work Circulation (1969): in both works, transparent hoses lie on
the floor, intertwined in a convoluted, interconnected system.
Liquids are pumped through the hoses in both as well. But here
is where the differences between the two installations begin.
Whereas Hans Haacke had water pumping through Circulation
Tue Greenfort uses vegetable oil instead. The oil, as well as the
gas tank from which it is pumped, come from the bus that was
also used in the Danish artist’s work Free Public Bus Line (2005).
During the exhibit “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (2005), Greenfort
initiated a bus line between two small towns in northern
Germany. Guests could ride for free, and ecologically. With his
Plant Oil Circulation, Greenfort engages his own newer work with
a piece of modern art history in intense dialogue. Hans Haacke
sought a minimalist, concretely functioning image for society
in his work – loosely based on what Niklas Luhmann termed a
“closed system”. Tue Greenfort reflects on this idea and takes
it even further, integrating into the closed system the possibility
for an ecological alternative. For Greenfort, it is not just human
society, but the also the world itself, which are closed. Thus Plant
Oil Circulation – After Hans Haacke 1969 is at the same level of
reflection as contemporary theoretical environmental research,
which holds that our ecosystem is the interconnected and closed
system called Earth, on which even the smallest of changes can
have far-reaching consequences.
Berlin artist Christine Würmell ties in to Greenfort’s work, in
that she too, makes the connection between ecology, everyday
life and the art system. In contrast to Greenfort, however, she
focuses instead on the symbols used within each system. An
example is her collage series “Easy Rider” (2008). Two collages
hung one above the other are paired to create what amounts
to a “closed circuit”. The upper collage is filled with ads for
gas-guzzling SUVs, which have been “naturally” photographed
in idyllic landscapes. However, the artist digitally cut out
the vehicle itself, replacing the remaining shape with texts,
statistics, etc. that criticize the environmental un-friendliness
of the “monster cars”. The lower collage shows the SUVs in
urban settings. Again the cars have been removed, and in their
place is a piece of nature from the advertisement above. Thus
critical dialectic and harmonic incorporation go hand in hand;
political agitation appears in the middle of affirmative commercial
aesthetics. The laudatory symbolic system of advertising, the
art collage and critical agitation are intertwined so that their
near interchangeability is made evident. In his well-known
book The Politics of Aesthetics (2003), French philosopher
Jacques Rancière differentiated between “dialectical montage”
and “symbolic montage”. He also maintained at the time that
symbolic montage – which underlines similarities instead
of opposites – had replaced the comparatively critical and
ambivalent montage of artists like Martha Rosler. Christine
Würmell, however, demonstrates that it is necessary to consider
both forms of montage together; in the closed (symbolic) system
of our world they both need as well as serve each other mutually.
What all three artists have in common is that they do not consider
the climate catastrophe as something detached from art, and
vice versa. It is exactly this point that the Vienna-based artist
Anna Meyer emphasizes in her work. For example: a demolished
building façade painted on a length of brightly colored plastic;
in front of the ruin lie deformed boards, windows, car tires… A
typical scenario that we western Europeans get to see flickering
across our television screens every late summer: the aftermath
of one of the tornados, which thanks to global climate change
are happening ever more frequently and angrily. Across the tarp
read the words: “Powered by Gordon Matta-Clark”. The artist
raises attention to parallels between the famous “Cuttings” of
US American artist Matta-Clark – deconstructions of building
walls – and the destructive power of the tornados – particularly
in the USA. A good answer to the bad news that today’s climate
has long been the work of men; a “second nature”, as Karl Marx
formulated it. Of course the same holds true for art; thus both
are presented in such a provocative as well as insightful way.
And when it comes to climate change, art isn’t as innocent as
one might think. After all, the German philosopher Immanuel
Kant defined the aesthetic category of the “sublime” through the
feeling of the “intelligible” superiority of mankind over nature. It
is the predominance of this still widespread hubris that is not just
a minor player in the pending climate catastrophe – and it, too is
“powered by art”.
A similar parallel between art and climate change may be seen in
Rirkrit Tiravanijas work series “Untitled (Less Oil More Courage)”
that started in 2003. The statement that doubles as the title
was first presented at the Venice Biennial in 2003, in oil with
white lettering against a black background. At the time, and in
the context of this major exhibit, the piece seemed to be a clear
refusal of the then-prevailing painting hype. For the 8th Sharjah
Biennial in 2007, the same statement was printed on signs
mounted along the streets of the United Arab Emirates.
This time, the focus of the content shifted: “less oil more
courage” was a clear criticism of the oil economy – and this in
the “lion’s den”. A year later, the Thai artist showed his work in
the exhibit “Moral Fantasies – Art and Climate” at the Thurgau
Canton Art Museum. Now the sentence may be read on a t-shirt,
which may be purchased, placing personal identification with
the critical statement in the foreground. The t-shirt as a kind
of “second skin” emphasizes both the fashion as well as the
subversiveness of this process.
The moment of “sweeping in front of one’s own door” – of
reflecting on the (negative) involvement of art and artistic activity
during climatic change – presupposes not only the notion of
Earth as an interlinked and closed system, which I have now
often addressed. Much more it is the self-critical activity that
make such art works about climatic change both credible and
convincing. A last example of this is Dan Peterman’s project My
Sky (2007). Two oversized airplane tickets hang from the ceiling
of the exhibition space: tickets from a round-trip flight from
Chicago to London, which the artist himself had recently made.
Chicago-based Dan Peterman – who has been realizing ecological
art projects since the late 1980s, such as his minimalistic
furniture made from recycled plastics – guiltily calculated his
own carbon footprint that resulted from the flight. A second
phase of My Sky plans to plant as many trees as are needed to
compensate for Peterman’s calculated carbon footprint. The
circle is closed; the critical self-accusation ends in productive
activity. And rightly so!