COAL 2020 AWARD WINNING PROJECT

Paul Duncombe was born in 1987. He lives and works in Caen, France.

A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, Paul Duncombe explores the different scales of landscape. His successive researches, on the Labrador ice floes, the storms in the Celtic Sea, the boreal forests, or the irradiated lands of Fukushima, put in relation the apparent simplicity of the works of nature with the increasing technicality of modern societies. From simple gestures to the most complex monumental installations, his work crosses borders and disciplines, relying on collaborations with specialists from all horizons: biologists, geologists, astrophysicists, high mountain guides…thus multiplying points of view and experiences. He develops and exhibits his projects in France: Le 104, 63e Salon de Montrouge, Palais de Tokyo, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac and abroad: Unicorn Center for Art (Beijing), Coopérative Méduse (Quebec), Kyoto Art Center (Kyoto).

MANICOUAGAN

Known as the Eye of Quebec, the Manicouagan impact crater is one of the largest and best preserved on Earth. With a diameter of 100 km, it was formed 214 million years ago following the fall of a meteorite of 8 km. Lost in the middle of Quebec, the Astroblème, now classified as a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO, is home to unique fauna, flora and geological features. The extraterrestrial origin of these reliefs, the indigenous history of the territory and the artificial engulfment of vast forests by the waters, give the site a mystical aura.

Paul Duncombe wishes to extend to Manicouagan his research work undertaken since 2015 in collaboration with naturalists and geologists, on the violence of mass extinctions and meteorite impacts. From physical and digital samples taken on site during an expedition in complete autonomy, accompanied by a multidisciplinary team, it will represent all the mechanisms that led to the re-conquest of the site by plants, insects and other living species, until the first nations. In the aesthetics of space exploration missions (real and fictitious), a home-made electronic station will be deployed in the crater. With the poetry inherent in the naivety of the artistic gaze in the face of observed creatures and natural phenomena, this creative laboratory will unfold in pursuit of the sublime, of contingent beauties and evidence of an absolute hidden in nature.

In the digital age, in a world that is now mapped, rationalized, and aware of its finitude, this device that is both technological and artisanal, digital and physical, at the crossroads of science, naturalism, survivalism, and “maker” cultures, will allow for the reinvention or reintroduction of meaning and links between the initial historical crisis, the biological rebirth of the site, and modern crises, present or future.

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

Observation, understanding and respect for living things are part of my education. It is an important cultural heritage. I am fortunate to have grown up close to nature, surrounded by all kinds of creatures, and that is still the case. As a sensitive and determining report, I think of concrete situations like the operations of removal of seabirds in Lorient in 1999/2000 with the LPO (League for the Protection of Birds). These experiences in my youth have certainly contributed to my current sensitivity: nature has become a space that can be defined by the anthropic phenomena that destroy it and I am looking for the aesthetic potential of this imbalance between contemporary industrial powers and the fragility of life; between a soiled feather and the 30,000 tons of an oil tanker, to illustrate the previous example. There is a part of sublime in these deleterious relations of forces, between humanity and nature, between civilization and the living.

How did your interest in meteorite impacts on living things come about?

You have to imagine a projectile of several kilometers crossing the atmosphere in hardly a blink of an eye. The instantaneous liquefaction of the rock over a depth of 10,000 meters. A thick column of matter that rises to the stratosphere, then envelops the entire planet. Earthquakes of magnitude 12, devastating tidal waves, volcanic irruptions, fire storms, widespread fires… and in this chaos, life, which collides violently with matter.
When one is interested in the cosmos, it is less a question of the fragility of the living than of its absurdity. The history of the universe is that of a series of disproportionate catastrophes and certain scars on the surface of the Earth remind us that we are passing through this story made of celestial trajectories, molten matter and particles. The beauty of what surrounds us comes from there, from this staggering drift, from the contingency of events and the finitude of the living in this mineral eternity. Here too I am interested in the imbalance between these different forces and the resilience of animal or plant species. An astrobleme is an open-air museum, a memorial that speaks of the end of the world but also of the beginning again.

How did you discover the Manicouagan astrobleme?

During a 2015 residency in Quebec, I went to the North Shore, to Labrador, initially about “Iceberg Alley”. There is only one trail through the forest and it leads to the Manicouagan astrobleme. For an average human, the horizon is about 5km away and this crater is 100km away. It is there that I took the full measure of this incredible violence and its supposed repercussions on the living, on a local and then planetary scale. These broken landscapes actually reveal the true identity of the world and the creatures that inhabit it. Something absolute, like an implacable mechanic of fall, of gravity against which the upward momentum of life is in perpetual resistance. Staying at the Uapishka science station, I began to document and interact with scientists working at the site. This started a series of projects on biological crises: Triassic-Jurassic, Cretaceous-Paleogene, until today the so-called Holocene extinction.

What is your relationship with science fiction?

Whatever their nature, the imaginary worlds developed in cinematographic or literary works, or even video games, are only the reflection of our present. In the current abundance of futuristic dystopias, whether technological or political, there is undoubtedly a self-fulfilling prophecy. In my opinion, we are already in the middle of science fiction, we live it every day. It is therefore a major influence in my artistic work.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

Nature is also a political space and I have sometimes been involved in more militant environmentalist actions. But I think today that the real commitment is sobriety. This is a particularly difficult goal to achieve. In the meantime, I am extremely attached to rurality. This proximity to the field and to the people who live it on a daily basis allows me to get involved in all kinds of projects, to be in the experience, the practice and the concrete, in something that resembles reality.

How do you imagine the world to come?

Nature does not need to be saved, it is humanity that is in danger: we live in an outdated model, in illusion and torpor. “Another end of the world is possible” this contemporary adage could become a principle of shared popular action, a program of existence: we must reinvent our relationship to the world, to nature, to the living, to the other, and I believe that artists are working on it!

Featured image: Paul Duncombe, Quebec, 2015

L’article COAL 2020 Award: MEET PAUL DUNCOMBE, WINNER est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects.

Eléonore Saintagnan was born in 1979 in Paris, France. She lives and works in Brussels, Belgium.

After studying visual arts and documentary film, Éléonore Saintagnan graduated from the Studio national du Fresnoy and then from Bruno Latour’s SPEAP master’s program at Sciences Po Paris. In 2010, she received the Curator’s Prize at the Salon de Montrouge. In 2018, her film Une fille de Ouessant won the best short film award at Visions du Réel (Switzerland), and then she won the Isère art contemporain prize endowed with a residency at Moly-Sabata. She exhibits in France: CRAC Alsace, Palais de Tokyo, Néon in Lyon, Mains d’œuvres in Saint-Ouen, La Criée Centre d’art contemporain de Rennes, and abroad: Wiels (Brussels), Galerie Elaine Levy (Brussels) as well as in film festivals such as FID Marseille, Hors-Pistes at the Centre Pompidou, or DOC Fortnight at MoMA (New-York), MMCA (Seoul)

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD : SPARROW PROJECT

In 1958, Mao Zedong undertook a vast campaign to rid China of its sparrows, which were accused of stealing 25,000 tons of rice grain per year from humans. By observing the way of life of these birds, it was noticed that they could not fly more than two and a half hours in a row under penalty of exhaustion. So it was decided that for three days, young and old, men and women, would go out into the streets and fields, armed with flags, gongs and slingshots, to destroy nests, break eggs and prevent birds from landing. Ten million birds perished during this campaign, which finally had the opposite effect to the one expected: the following year, the insects, deprived of their predators, destroyed almost all the crops.

This rather unknown historical event condenses in itself the stakes of the disappearance of the sparrows whose population has dropped by 95% in thirty years. With The Sparrows Project, Éléonore Saintagnan aims to create a sort of carnival ritual to atone for our past human failings, and to remind us, through a research project, of the interdependence between humans and sparrows. A film will mix images shot in color and black and white archives, reconstructing in particular the campaign of Mao Zedong. This cruel fable tells us about the madness of men through a particularly striking example of extermination. This remote episode nevertheless resonates with our time, which sees the progressive and worrying disappearance of birds and biodiversity in general. The artist will also act concretely for the preservation of sparrows through the collective realization of works and nesting boxes in the public space and the mobilization of young people and artists in connection with associations and scientists, promoting the reintroduction of the species in the city.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this era of covid-19 and what is its influence on your artistic process?

I am in Belgium, in Brussels. Here the confinement is less strict than in France. I have to homeschool my 7 year old son Edgar, which leaves me much less time than usual to work. The planned exhibitions and workshops have been postponed to next year. The ceramics studio where I usually go is closed. So I had to adapt, I’m moving on to other things. I was already working a lot with my son before, but now, even more: we make pieces of paper mache, we film the birds that come on the terrace (last week they came to get materials to make their nests). I write when I have time, I read… For the Sparrows project, I imagined what anti-sparrow lyrics could be, and I sent them to Gabriel Mattei, who is a composer. He put them to music. Musician friends send me their interpretations and we move forward in this way, from a distance, waiting for the day when we can all gather to play together. Here is one of the songs:

Small sparrow’s beak
Pick three small grains of wheat
Small sparrow’s beak
Pick three small grains of rice

Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow flies in the wind
Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow steals from people

Little beaks by the millions
Peck the fields of the country
Little beaks by the millions
Threat of shortage

Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow flies in the wind
Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow steals from people

Little beak of vermin
Crush with your stick
On your pan drums
And sing this song

Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow flies in the wind
Fly, sparrow, fly,
Sparrow steals from people

Small sparrow’s beak
Tomorrow will be well closed
And in our beautiful stoves
Lots of golden buns!

Sleep, sparrow, sleep,
You sleep for a long time
Sleep, sparrow, sleep,
And sing the people

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

This colony of sparrows living on my terrace is the first thing I see in the morning when I have breakfast. I nurture them, they are my own “companion species”, to use Donna Harraway’s words. I really like this idea of taming animals without taking away their freedom. At the moment, there is also a flycatcher, a wood pigeon and two blackbirds, a male and a female, which sing at the top of their voices, it is very beautiful.

How was the sparrow project born?

The project was born from a correlation between my ceramic work and my interest in ethology.

After having made a series of very large pots that I consider sculptures, and that I exhibited at the Criée art center in Rennes this winter, I wanted to make ceramic pieces that could be hung on walls like paintings. One of the properties of ceramics is that it will burst during firing if it is too thick or if it contains voids, so the shapes must be hollow, with a hole for air to escape. Basically, the characteristics of the nesting boxes are the same: hollow shapes with a flight hole. So it seemed natural to me to make sculptures that could be used as nesting boxes. To encourage birds to nest in them, simply place them on east- or west-facing walls, high enough so that cats cannot access them, and tailor the size of the hole to the species of bird that is already present on the site.

My interest in ethology began with my meeting with Vinciane Despret at Sciences-Po, while I was following Bruno Latour’s master’s degree. I then started to read the writings of ethologists like Konrad Lorenz or Frans de Waal. My nesting box project brought me closer to ornithologists in Brussels who are working on the lack of habitat for birds, especially swifts and sparrows. When I told Erik Etienne, who runs the Sparrow Group in Brussels, that I was a videographer, and that a colony of sparrows lived on my terrace, he said, “Well, then you’re going to be part of the GTM Images, the Sparrow Working Group, which is in charge of feeding our database with images. These images are used to do scientific research on sparrows, and to make educational kits to inform people about the need to protect this endangered species, to feed them and to build nest boxes for them.” This is how I found myself feeding and filming this colony of sparrows, and reading everything I could find about these little critters that have always lived alongside humans.

In 2015, you were making The Wild Beasts about the green parakeets of Brussels, tell us about your interest in birds?

At that time I was not particularly interested in birds. Grégoire Motte and I had a film project about feral animals, i.e. animals that have been domesticated and then released into the wild. Discovering green parakeets in Brussels where we had just settled was a surprise! They appeared in front of our eyes with their fluo green feathers, then we led the investigation… They were brought there in the 80’s by people who were totally unaware of the impact their action could have on biodiversity. I met Guy Florizoone, the owner of the Méli Park, who in 1974, had released about sixty parrots of all colors to “brighten up the grey sky of Brussels” which was overhanging the heads of the visitors of his amusement park. Only the green parakeets survived, and they even reproduced at a crazy rate. Although he clears his name by saying that he is surely not the only one who caused this invasion of parakeets, he acknowledges that the experiment was a huge ethical mistake. At the time, we did not yet have the ecological awareness that we have today.

It turns out that the massive presence of these green collared parakeets is yet another reason for the lack of habitat for endemic species, which include sparrows. So there is indeed a link. But if I am interested in sparrows, it is in a broader perspective which includes in a general way the relations of the men with the animals. This topic has suddenly become topical with the Covid-19 pandemic, which is believed to be caused by too much proximity to certain wild animals. For the past ten years, I have been interested in the place of animals in the lives of humans. In the Middle Ages, they were considered to be full-fledged city beings. They had the same legal status as humans. When one of them committed a murder or a robbery, he was sometimes summoned to court, for a judgment in which he was represented by a lawyer (then called a defender), just like any other human being. Then, with the Enlightenment, it became an object, and today, as more and more fascinating discoveries are made about animal intelligence, its status is being reconsidered.

History and archival images are a recurring aspect of your work.

I studied documentary film. The world we live in – its absurdities in particular – is my primary source of inspiration. The story allows us to understand things a little better, to explain the behaviors of these strange animals that are humans.

In 2018, I made a film called Une fille de Ouessant about this Breton island where, until the 1960s, almost only women lived. I had gone to this island in 2014 for a residency in the Créac’h semaphore, where I had shot video images. It was only two years later, by interweaving these images with black and white archives found on the website of the Cinémathèque de Bretagne, that I built the thread that holds the film. My personal story, that of the impossible mourning of my father, found its place through the story of a collective mourning, that of all the sailors who disappeared at sea, whose women of Ouessant, always dressed in black, haunted by ghosts, waited for news by keeping watch, at night, small wax crosses in place of the bodies.

With the internet, the archive has become an easily accessible material.

We used a lot of archive material from the web for Les Bêtes sauvages, which tells the story of another time and place, where we could not go.

For the Sparrows project, I want to make a film based on archival footage of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. My idea is to replay the scenes filmed in these archives, here and now, without locating the action precisely in space or time.

However, I would like to keep some black and white archive images. These are the dead bird shots. On the one hand, because we are not going to massacre tens of thousands of birds during the shooting, and on the other hand, to show that this story that looks like a fable is not one, that it is a true story. My intention is not to speak of Mao’s China or of a bygone era, but to speak of the madness of men that can resurface – and has already resurfaced – anywhere else.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

Personally and in my work, I try to be as eco-responsible as possible.

When I make ceramics, I do not use any toxic products. Cooking gives off smoke, it’s unavoidable, I try not to overdo it, to cook in a monocook whenever possible.

For my exhibition at the Criée, instead of building black rooms with picture rails to project the videos, we made huts from recycled materials found on site: wood scraps from past exhibitions, crates from the market, chestnut bark recovered from a local producer. It is strange because many people saw in these precarious constructions, African huts, whereas they were rather inspired by the traditional lodges of Breton lumberjacks.

As a rule, I try to make things myself, it teaches me skills and gives me real satisfaction. At home, I have a compost and a neighborhood vegetable garden, and I don’t have a car… but I am well aware that these small habits will not be enough to solve the problem and that strong political decisions are needed to save biodiversity. I hope that my films can address these issues with the public, especially the younger generation.

How do you imagine the world to come?

As much as I like to delve into the past, I’m not very good at predicting the future. We are experiencing things today that were unimaginable six months ago, so we can imagine that anything is possible.

Featured Image: Sparrow hunting by students of the Beijing Normal University (China). Roger-Viollet

L’article COAL 2020 Prize : MEETING WITH ELEONORE SAINTAGNAN, SPECIAL MENTION OF THE JURY est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects.

Ioannis Koliopoulos and Paola Palavidi were born in 1986 in Athens, Greece. They live and work in Athens and Tinos, Greece.

Hypercomf is a speculative design collective, taking the form of a fictional company, created in 2017 by artists Ioannis Koliopoulos and Paola Palavidi. Through focused collaborations with musicians, filmmakers and local communities, their projects focus on the interaction between people, nature and technology. They are particularly interested in the networks of organic and digital ecosystems, the human-machine duality, and the psychosomatic impact of the means and comforts of our ever-changing technological age. Recipients of grants (Fulbright, Greece), and residencies (Pioneer Works, New York), they have exhibited in Greece and internationally: 7th Thessaloniki Biennial (Greece), Heat Company (Brussels), First Draft (Sydney).

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD: CENTER FOR STUDIES OF OCEAN FLOOR AS CEILING

Largely unexplored, the ecosystems of the deep sea and the ocean floor are home to between 1.7 and 2.3 million species that are still unknown. Composed of both large organisms and multi-species microbial collectives such as microalgae or plankton, the ocean plays an essential role in the balance of the entire planetary system and could reveal the mysteries of the origin of life.

To address the issue of marine plastics that threaten this ecosystem today and deal with the issue of responsibility for pollution of international waters, Greek artists Ioannis Koliopoulos and Paola Palavidi, united in the collective Hypercomf, imagined a fictional company: the Center for studies of Ocean Floor as Ceiling. In the form of an imaginary story, their project promotes inventive, creative and functional solutions for the reuse of plastic pollutants from beach cleanups.

An installation will offer an immersive tour of the company’s fictional office, entirely decorated with 3D printed objects made from ocean plastic filaments and a fossilized plastic terrazzo. A promotional video from the company will take the perspective of an ROV (Remotely Operated Underwater Vehicle) in the deep sea, scraping the ground with its robotic claws to collect samples from the seafloor, revealing the interdependence between life and technology, and highlighting the impacts of human exploitation on living things.

Fundamentally participatory, the project relies on educational activities, events, workshops to promote a circular production system based on the reuse of synthetic materials and the union of maritime communities in the preservation of marine ecosystems.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era? Does this influence your artistic practice?

After a six-month residency at the Pionner Works Center in Brooklyn, we went into complete isolation at home on the island of Tinos in the Cyclades. The daily life of the people here has not changed much since they live mainly from small-scale agriculture. But the lack of economic and human transport links to the mainland has accentuated problems that were already present. It goes without saying that Greeks are somewhat disillusioned with economic crises, the country has been in them for more than a decade, and our generation has never experienced a period without them. We toughened up a bit and found ways to stay positive without losing sight of our motivation, no matter what. Working and surviving as an artist was already very difficult, now it is hanging by a thread. But perhaps it is through the arts that we will be able to regain confidence in a social life? It’s too early to tell, but we remain optimistic: we are all affected by the situation and it will bring us even closer together.

Can you tell us about an event that changed your relationship with nature and biodiversity?

About ten years ago, we moved from our apartment in one of the most densely populated areas of Athens to a village of 200 inhabitants on a small island in the Aegean Sea. This move was motivated by the persistent crisis of the Greek economy and our passion for plants: we were running a tiny plantation on our sunburned Athenian balcony and were passionate about alternative food production. Today, we farm the land and live in a wild landscape to explore. The search for herbs, greens, mushrooms, fruits, etc. and above all the beekeeping activity have become an important part of our life. We wanted to understand the networks, the natural processes that ensure a healthy and diverse ecosystem. So, we too have been rooted, buried, pollinated, and invaded by vegetation: the ceaseless movement of various organisms, all linked by the cycle of life and death, has made us want to be part of this network, by being more aware of it.

How did you become interested in ocean pollution and international maritime law?

The Aegean Sea is crossed by ships of all types, nationalities and sizes. The coastline we are looking at is hit hard by the northern winds that blow across the landscape unimpeded for miles. The quantity and variety of pollutants that end up on these 300 meters of sand are staggering. When you walk on the beach on a windy day, it’s a bit like reading the newspaper of humanity: depending on the political news and events, there are different types of garbage, in all languages, to clean up on the beaches. The biggest waste usually washes up in the form of plastic filaments and multicolored confetti. While trying to clean up the shoreline, we collect finds. Over the years, it became clear that the marine biodiversity in the area was decreasing, and that human activities were the primary cause.

The observation of this situation led us to research and experimentation on materials that inspired the project “Center for Studies of Ocean Floor as Ceiling”. We wanted to focus on the study of the ocean floor, these unexplored places, which harbor life, full of unknowns and problems that we are discovering little by little thanks to space exploration technologies. From a human perspective, the depths also symbolize weightlessness, a darkness and a glow as if from the womb, a spiritual connection between our species and the water. These depths of the sea so strange, enigmatic and unwelcoming to life are in fact the origin of life itself.

The deep seabed is an area of booming industrial activity: from internet cables to mining, many routes and locations are located on the seabed in the heart of international waters. Scientific research suggests that the ocean floor is much more polluted than the surface of the oceans, particularly because of the deposition of waste and the “marine snow” formed by micro-plastics that sink into the depths. Our waste would be fossilized in this sedimentary library, like the archives of a day in the life of the Men of today.

You are a collective. How do you see the participatory dimension and the collaboration with the inhabitants of the coastal areas in particular, which play an important role in your work?

Our project will make use of a large amount of collected marine plastic waste. This is one of the steps in which we will engage communities through public pick-ups and a call for participation. Sideways waste collection functions as a “citizen science” of observation and diagnosis. For example, by reporting data on marine organisms, large garbage, and garbage with ownership markings, we can help prove illegal fishing practices or dumping by commercial vessels.

Our collaboration “Hypercomf” was founded as an artistic identity, that of a self-proclaimed pseudo company. It is a deliberately abstract entity that we use as a vehicle to seek anonymity, a poetic license with which to analyze corporate practices and tactics, a platform for collaboration with other artists. “Hypercomf” is a contraction of the terms “hyper” and “comfortable”.

What is your environmental commitment as artists and citizens?

From the very beginning, we have placed importance on the process of sourcing our materials. We mainly use abandoned objects, used clothes, reuse upholstery, industrial waste, second hand objects already steeped in history. We seek to add conceptual value to these abandoned objects through poetic design. Much of our work to date has focused on fabric, because in addition to being an incredibly tactile, versatile, beautiful, lightweight, easy to carry, and familiar material, fabric is also enormously wasteful when produced irresponsibly. A lot of time and social interaction goes into the sourcing of materials, for the collection of objects or for sourcing leftovers from production lines.

One of our most recent projects was to produce an experimental documentary on the interactions between humans, animals and natural organisms in the urban ecosystem. We have studied and documented these interactions in the New York City metropolis and found the emergence of an “urbanophilic” ecosystem maintained by human dietary excesses. It was a project that brought us into contact with many different people, and to collect their experience of nature in the city. Before that, during a project in Italy, we documented a very different connection to the living: in a small town in the foothills of the Dolomite Mountains, shepherds watch over a protected local breed of sheep throughout the year, and sell their wool in town to a small family who works it in a historic woolen mill. We always try to understand the communities and ecosystems in which we work as best we can, to reflect their characteristic interactions.

How do you imagine the world to come?

Humans will, no doubt, continue their technological and industrial development, and we hope that they do so having learned from the past. Conserving the health and biodiversity of our planet is essential. Perhaps mechanics and nature will merge to create an augmented, artificial ecosystem, with the automation of many tasks; perhaps buildings will be designed as ecosystems in their own right… It’s impossible to predict, but it’s interesting to develop hypotheses. The most positive scenario would be for us to figure out how to make the best use of our new technological powers and connectivity, and for us to define new systems of collaboration and behavior together as a unified species, regardless of nationalities or circumstances. In this way we can reduce the activities of our species that negatively affect the existence of other organisms on the planet.

Featured image: © HYPERCOMF, Polycelium.net, 2020

L’article COAL PRICES 2020 : MEET HYPERCOMF est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects.

Lia Giraud was born in 1985 in Paris, France. She lives and works in Paris, France.

Lia Giraud is an artist and a doctor in Visual Arts, trained in documentary image. For more than ten years, his installations have been questioning our conceptions and relationships to life, in a current context marked by science and technology. By making biological phenomena the sensitive and operative materials of her works, she highlights the states of rupture that agitate our experience of the “environment”. Committed to the creation of “new ecologies”, her works initiate interdisciplinary research ecosystems at the frontier of science and society, involving researchers in the natural sciences, thinkers, artists, and citizen communities. His work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions in France: Centre Pompidou, Le 104, Le Cube, Le Bel Ordinaire, and abroad: Festival Images de Vevey (Switzerland), Parc Naturel de l’Our (Luxembourg), Dutch Design Week (Netherlands), and educational interventions for the general public.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD: ECOUMENE

Since 2018, Lia Giraud has been exploring with Écoumène the habitability of territories reconfigured by human activities: the gentrification of Paris undermining its cultural diversity, or the disappearance of a Madagascan forest endangering existences at multiple scales. Everywhere, the rarefaction of life forms incites us to think about the impoverishment of the links and relations they initiate at multiple levels. This concrete disappearance has sensitive and cultural repercussions on us that we must understand and reveal.

The third part ofEcoumene is set in a polluted area of Mexico, a 15 km long “Dead Zone” along the El Salto River, irrigated by the chemical waste of about 400 industrial companies. Its health impacts on the population and the surrounding biodiversity are extremely heavy. Nourished by scientific research on the purifying faculties of certain micro-algae capable of resisting, accumulating and removing heavy metals present in acidic aquatic environments, this project envisages the resurgence of the living as a concrete solution to water purification, but also as a creative support, allowing to connect damaged existences.

The artist has indeed developed a process of living image called Algaegraphy. The photosensitive micro-algae literally “develop” the image to which they are exposed and confer organic behaviors that echo the narrative of each territory. A symbol of environmental sensitivity and universality, a biomaterial prized by the technosciences, microalgae are here the invisible ecological revelators of our actions and their future. Lia Giraud will create a series of living images as a means of dialogue. The aim is to explore the notion of resilience by discussing the ways in which life can develop biologically, socially and symbolically in the context of ecological disaster.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era? How does this situation influence your artistic process?

Being confined to my home in Paris, this period is a bit familiar but mostly unheard of! Many new things are expressed, observed and questioned. For an artist working with the living, it is like a scenario that is written on a daily basis. I like to dream that an ecological way out is possible when nature reclaims its rights in our deserted urban spaces. I am fascinated by the circulation of the virus which reveals the multiple links that unite humans and non-humans. I question myself on this invisible force capable of weakening the capitalist system but also on our reaction of protection and distancing in front of a potential death. I also observe our adaptation to a virtual world and our paradoxical desire to reconnect with the primary life forms that populate our kitchens and gardens. Put in dormancy, I experiment like others, a form of minimal life by trying to detect the essential. This crisis also brings to the fore beautiful energies: a capacity to reinvent ourselves and to propose a different world, more social I hope. It is still too early to sort out or know what will stand the test of time, but this period is nonetheless prolific and surprising: alive!

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

It is rather an ontological sensitivity of the living. I find it again, in this period of confinement: to change and provoke change, to escape from stability and control, to be fragile and for this reason precious, to enter in relation… It is this infinite capacity to “put in movement” (e-motio in Latin) which is literally the object of my emotion and which, since always, binds me to the living. It is these same sensitive processes that work each of my installations. The world we live in seems to be governed by immutability, control, individualism, infallibility. To reveal another system of values, the one that constitutes us as living beings, seems to me urgent. In my work, I am more interested in neglected forms of life, whose size or temporality seem to escape our perceptions. This life that we have forgotten. Through it, I seek to highlight the primary behaviors of this matter of which we are also constituted: sensitivities to the environment, dynamics of adaptation, phenomena of collective elaboration or struggle, individual specificities, etc… It is these hidden realities, revealed in my works, which animate me and allow me to imagine differently the world which comes.

What inspired your project? How did your interest in the subject come about?

Ecoumène links my documentary commitment, linked to my practice of photographic and video images, and a more recent practice of live installation through which I have sought new formal writing and collective and interdisciplinary research methods. This return to investigation is a way to reconnect with the issues that matter to me and to get involved in them in a concrete way. The environmental commitment also continues a long research work, more theoretical, around the notion of “environment”. This “environment” is the ecological, technical and symbolic relationship we have with what surrounds us. These three aspects are jointly linked and indispensable to our development (individuation). If an imbalance occurs in this equation, the other terms are by extension impacted. In this sense, the ecological crisis cannot be limited to symptoms. These results reduce our understanding of the situation to a thin aspect of the problem. To understand it, it is a relational fabric that must be observed. The disappearance of the Malagasy forests revolts, but what is the colonial responsibility in the wood trade, which has deeply transformed the organization of society, know-how and territories? How does this economy impact traditional beliefs related to these spaces? Starting from the specificities of each individual story, of each place, the Ecoumene project confronts this complexity. It attempts to provide a new perspective on the formation of these knots and their current repercussions. Diving into the heart of these manufacturing situations, considering practical and emotional realities together, may allow us to identify new avenues of understanding and more global responses.

How was the technique of algebra born and what does it actually consist of?

Everything was born from a reflection on the image, on the way we represent the world. Photography freezes, immortalizes and frames. It touches me for its grip on reality, its phenomenon of chemical emergence, the experience of time that it crosses or the relationships that it weaves beyond its frame. It was necessary that this image becomes alive, that it forsakes illusions to assert itself as an observatory of the dynamics and processes in which our existences are inscribed. This process is my first scientific collaboration, the story of a meeting with Claude Yéprémian and the team “Cyanobacteria, Cyanotoxins and Environment” (National Museum of Natural History). The grain of the image is made up of a multitude of light-sensitive microorganisms. The cells organize themselves and develop according to the different lights of a negative, an image that I create and then project on the surface of the culture. The aggregation of cells, more or less strong, reveals the different green densities of the algaecide. Living, the image is linked to its environment which allows it to develop, transform or disappear. It is literally and figuratively an “environment” and reveals all its complexity. The choice of these micro-algae is also highly symbolic: as the first light sensors, they question our human perceptions and invite us to consider other sensibilities to the world. Markers of pollution and solutions to environmental imbalances, their adaptation and assimilation attest to our connection to the environment. Present in the water and in the air, they circulate on a global scale, linking remote areas to the places where technosciences are practiced. So many aspects that, on another scale, echo the realities of each proposed Ecoumenon.

How would you define your practice of portrait and landscape photography?

Joint. Portrait and landscape coexist in my documentary approach as much as in mesology, where each individual is associated with his environment. From then on, the portrait is an emotional state revealing its context; the landscape is an incarnation of subjectivities, of individual imprints. Each algebraic composition of Ecoumene seeks to restore the relationship that unites the individual to the space he inhabits. It is the result of a set of “samples” taken in situ: photographs, but also personal accounts, walks, meetings. The resulting form is a mixture of these physical and psychic experiences. During the confinement, I discovered Glenn Albrecht’s thinking and his notion of “solastalgia” which resonates strongly with this work. This term describes a state of anxiety, sorrow or helplessness felt by inhabitants deprived of the comfort of feeling “at home”, in the face of the environmental degradation of their living spaces. Each landscape portrait in Ecoumene explores this very notion of habitability, made precarious by gentrification, deforestation or river pollution. Despite the different territories, the transformation of the beloved place is always experienced as a quasi-physical wound for its inhabitants: the cutting of a tree in Vohibola is a form of amputation. The future Ecoumene on El Salto (Mexico) is based on the premise that breathing life back into a place, acting to preserve its human and non-human plurality, are gestures that preserve the environment as much as they heal in depth damaged human existences. More than ever, this project crosses the practices of portraiture and landscape, taking them well beyond a classical conception. The algae and the depolluting micro-algae that compose it, become the biological and symbolic support of a new habitat to be cultivated on this “dead zone”.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

These are choices and gestures that give rhythm to my daily life, but it is above all the particular place that I give to the living in my life and my practice: it is not only an external subject, but a concrete reality with which I live, I collaborate, that I experience as much as it experiences me. It is in this relationship that my environmental awareness and commitment is forged. It is also the one I try to transmit as an artist. To assume the modalities of expression of the living in our aseptic and more and more virtualized world, is not simple: it is in itself a political position. To the extent of an exhibition, the presence of a living work calls into question economic ends, ousts the notion of results, disrupts the sometimes rigid frameworks of institutional arrangements and demands new forms of emotional responsibility, based on attention and care.

The creation of collective research contexts is another way to advocate for the construction of plural visions. It seems to me that the artist has a key role to play in the circulation and connection between disciplines, ways of thinking and contexts that are too often isolated. Working with engineers and scientists, allowing them to glimpse a more emotional aspect of life is a way to influence the shape of future technologies. By its diffusion, Ecoumene V.2. facilitated the meeting between the activists of Vohibola and the new Malagasy minister in charge of ecology. Initiating and facilitating contact is another way to accelerate concrete repercussions. These approaches contribute, it seems to me, to forge new ecologies that will be necessary to better think tomorrow.

How do you imagine the world to come?

In the short term, it will be like the current and past crises: made of great ecological challenges that humans will have to face collectively. By ecology, I mean its broadest etymological acceptance which is that of habitats (eco). The limits that we are reaching affect our ways of living together biologically, socially, economically, symbolically, etc. When an industrialist produces food that they would not give to their child, do they collectively inhabit this world? For the future, I share Bruno Latour’s thought for whom the danger remains that “everything goes back to the way it was before”; that we initiate a revolution (rolling backwards) rather than an R-evolution. In order to be set in motion in a positive way, the world to come will have to consider as essential the logic of the living and the logic of the emotions.

Featured image: © Lia Giraud, Ecoumène V.2, algaegraphic detail

L’article COAL 2020 PRIZE : MEET LIA GIRAUD est apparu en premier sur COAL.

Linda Sanchez was born in 1983 in Thonon-les-Bains, France. She lives and works in Marseille, France.

Between sculpture and installation, drawing and video, Linda Sanchez plays with laws and physical phenomena. From the horizontality of a body of water to the trajectory of a waterfall, from the liquidity of sand to the elasticity of a binder, she observes existing phenomena, adjusts their scale, their correlation, their duration. In an elementary relationship to material and movement, she works by sensitive back and forth between intuition and experience. Notions of chance and order, figures of fall, writing of time; his works fix the movement in the matter, write it, measure it or transcribe it. A graduate of the Annecy School of Art, she has collaborated with researchers, writers and artists on several projects and exhibitions: Museum of Contemporary Art, Bullukian Foundation Prize in Lyon, Casa de Velázquez (Madrid), 62nd Salon de Montrouge, Emerige Revelations Grant, Friends of the Palais de Tokyo Prize.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD: COLONY

The lichen is a singular plant, having a double nature, symbiosis of a fungus and an alga. Part of the neglected biodiversity, it nevertheless covers 6% of the land surface. The oldest lichen fossils date from the oldest of the six geological periods of the Paleozoic (1.9 million years). In addition to being a perfect indicator of the pollution index, it has a capacity of resistance to extreme conditions and a faculty of revival. This resistance makes them pioneer organisms par excellence.

Linda Sanchez’s installation Colony is composed of objects of different natures, materials and forms, all linked by the same character, that of being colonized by yellow orange lichen. These elements are collected, gleaned, dug up, detached from various places on the territory, at the edge of roads, rivers, ruins, outskirts of cities, disused areas, where nothing moves. Paving stones, bits of sidewalk, tiles, angle irons, blocks and urban furniture are held together, in deposit, like a composite vestige reconstituting a colored pointillism.

Covered by the thickness of time, these objects are relics of our past occupation, stories of how we inhabit the territory, how we shape the landscape. Lichens and mosses are symbols of oblivion and abandonment, signs of the passing of time, which our societies fight with all their might. However, “it is not time that passes, it is us that passes”, writes Etienne Klein in Les tactiques de Chronos. The Colony project describes in a poetic way how this other form of the living which preceded us and which will succeed us, leaves an impression of relativity to the human temporality. This double colonization, between nature and culture, takes two reversed chronological directions: the vestige and the project, the speed and the timelessness.

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

The awareness of the infinitely long, almost timeless lifetimes of certain living beings, makes one dizzy. Between human and non-human worlds, the speeds of lives, their rhythm and their overlapping, the so complex networks of their process, their evanescence, is a miracle. I feel the relativity of my own scale of perception. Intuitively, the living is linked to movement and behavior in the details of matter. Twisting, repetition, circularity, twist, bounce, crush, push… In a thought image, life is born in a fold.

I have collaborated several times with researchers and physicists (Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes Paris Diderot, Institut Pierre-Gilles de Gennes). How do forms appear in nature, generate and mutate? Their experiments resemble sculpture, and appeal to a sensitive, concrete, visual apprehension that also induces the gesture and the hand. The appearance of cracks in a clay is related to the growth of veins in a plant surface, to the cartography of a city: different typologies but which tell the history of forms, their frameworks, their internal mechanics, their genealogies…

What inspired your project?

It comes from an idea of tenderness. How two things of different natures, (origins, modes of manufacture, narratives) can, by a new intrinsic characteristic, look at each other. And, according to a network of internal relations, to belong to the same family, or to the same kind. It is also a link to camouflage where contours, figures and patterns intertwine, and dismantle preconceived categories and orders. Colonie presents this linked set, as a composite remnant, reconstituting a colored pointillism.

I worked for a few years with the archaeological service of the city of Lyon*. Preventive archaeology works to safeguard the heritage, under the urban building, in an emergency linked to the development plans of the territory, public and private works. It was a collaboration rich in sharing our worlds and work logics. Archaeology is a narrative that precedes the writing of history and its versions. It is in the continuity of this work, during the residency at Casa Velasquez in Madrid, that the project began, on the site of Baelo Claudia (ancient Roman city located in Bolonia, near Tarifa in Andalusia).

*Partnership with the Amateur Plastic Practices of the School of Fine Arts of Lyon.

You have worked a lot with the living giving your works a random dimension. Here you are interested in lichens that colonize found objects…

In my work, I observe and play with physicalities, structures and transformations of matter. The liquidity of sand, the architecture of a spider’s web, the behavior of a drop of water… Phenomena that already exist. Like living things, they sometimes seem to move independently. The figures of the fall, the rocking, the sliding, are very present, as the assumed finding of their non-control and their elusiveness.

The lichen is a singular plant, symbiosis of a fungus and an alga. It is a very resistant pioneer organism and has a revival faculty. With tens of thousands of species, a lichen can be three months old, as well as three thousand years old. This form of timelessness is disturbing. Its mode of growth and expansion is by colonization of surfaces. This displacement structure refers to the way in which man colonizes and inhabits the territory.

Colonie lies in this paradox between objects shaped by man, and the thickness of time that covers them.

What is your relationship to collecting and sampling?

All of my works are attempts to capture, record, record, and remove movements and sections of time inscribed in the material. I build techniques, compounds and devices to write and transcribe them. This relationship of meaning and method is anchored more in a history of sculpture, in a very human link of looking at the landscape. The relationship to the collection is more new in my work, and interests me for its system of organization, notions of networks and wefts that underlie these sets.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

My work is anchored in an environmental problematic, by the relationship to poor and primary materials and elements, as well as by simple, empirical gestures, and always in evolution in a non-authoritarian relationship to what happens to the experience.

The film of the water drop*, the ” sand cloth” , ” Colony” , ” 30cm” of tree trunk, ” relaxation” are works that have a close and intact link to nature. They are objective samples, active and transferred, according to a question of natural and cultural coexistence.

They also testify to a link to a long time, to something that appears very slowly and little by little… shifts the scales of perception. ” It is not time that passes, it is us who pass”, writes Etienne Klein in ” Les tactiques de chronos” . The gesture wants to be a vector of thought without altering the nature of Nature. It is too often considered as a free resource, which time has however patiently sedimented́, transformed, fossilized… Oil for example, exhausted in less than 200 years, is the result of a slow degradation of plankton that took several tens of millions of years to form. The Colony project is the story of this reality too, the lichen is a slow endemic appearance in an environment preserved from pollution.

* title: ” 11752 meters and some dust…”

How do you imagine the world to come?

The present situation is already alarming. The crisis we are going through reveals the fragility of our globalization system (industrial, social and economic), our millennial anthropocentrism.
The planet blows, but only a fragment of a second on the scale of its time. A truce. Are we capable on a global scale of radically changing the course of things and learning from this situation? This is a relative balance compared to the food, energy, migration and climate problems threatening thousands of human beings and living species. Leaving us to ourselves, a suicidal and demented species.

Changing the paradigm, radically, together, requires political courage and an immense collective commitment. Slowing down, starting a degrowth, unlearning certain automatisms, would offer us so many beautiful inventions, a return to fields of knowledge left on the bangs, to re-envision the history of thought in a different way, to abandon so many painful mechanisms and languages, to protect biodiversity, to decentralize, to rediscover ways of being together, to remember to love.

L’article COAL 2020 AWARD : MEET LINDA SANCHEZ est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects.

Victor Remère was born in 1989 in Chaumont, France. He lives and works in Toulon, France.

A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure d’Art et de Design de Nancy and Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, Victor Remère participated in 2013 in the first session of the “Creation and Globalization” post-graduate program in Shanghai. There, alongside the artist Paul Devautour, and the economist Yann Moulier-Boutang, he defines his practice of art as a practice of the world. To make work within a popular market, to study the “tropicalization” of the Mediterranean coast by the massive introduction of exotic plants during the second half of the 18th century, to create a “low tech” clock which connects the fruits of the harvest to the passage of time in a farm, so many new formats of intervention guided by the concern to tie up links apart from the instituted frameworks of the art Sensitive to the richness of landscapes, he continues his research, his work and his explorations by observing the impact of human activity on the fauna and flora.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD : THE UNHARMED OF ART

By “sanctuarizing” large areas dedicated to army maneuvers and exercises for 150 years, military lands, with highly regulated access, have escaped urban sprawl, land speculation, certain modes of intensive agriculture, and industrialization, while being subject to maintenance and minimal human intervention. These conditions of conservation of natural spaces, represent a major interest for the preservation of flora and fauna, and make these territories remarkable reservoirs of biodiversity. Couldn’t we imagine that these territories could become models of eco-management and a favourable soil for the germination of new defence strategies, this time in the service of our precious biodiversity?

Victor Remère leaves to discover these places, in particular those of the Presqu’île de Saint-Mandrier, in the small bay of Toulon. In cooperation with the French Navy, which manages them, it strives to create “laboratory zones”, combining scientific research, artistic practices and agricultural know-how in the service of the preservation of life. Among these devices, Victor Remère wishes to install connected wild beehives, conceived as artistic, scientific and artisanal objects.

The heart of the project, and its process, consists in making social practices compatible, by seeking to affirm that an artistic intervention can preserve its autonomy and keep its specificity, by escaping the protected spaces of the institutions, by appearing where it is least expected, while inviting to its realization those who are generally the most distant from the practices of contemporary art: “the untouched by art”.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era? How does this situation influence your artistic process?

The confinement, I lived it alone, on the third and last floor of a rather spacious apartment which does not include neither garden, nor balcony, in the old center of Toulon, 500 meters from the Port. If I feel the absence of the people who are close to me, the spaces of nature, the sea where I practice apnea and surfing, the mountains, the forest, where I gather, walk, breathe, are also missing from my balance. This isolation is a unique experience, a challenge, a lesson. I compare it to a form of exploration, with its share of difficulties, pitfalls, discouragement, but always the reborn desire of a result. It is the experience necessary for the invention of new gestures, the clearing of new personal and artistic territories… Field actor, my approach of art is the practice of the world, then, if this constraint of the isolation refrains my activity, the origins of this crisis, the destruction of the natural habitats, reinforces considerably my will to make live this project The unharmed of art. Today, more than ever convinced of the interest that there is, to develop the biological and naturalistic benefit of these micro territory sanctuary.

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

I grew up in Haute-Marne, regularly looked after, with my brother, by my maternal grandparents who lived in the small village of Clinchamp, with less than 200 inhabitants. We crossed the street to get the milk at the farm, we fed the rabbits that my grandfather raised, we participated in the affouages, we tended the vegetable garden, and we walked, a lot, in the middle of the fields, the forests, the farms. I learned to recognize trees, edibles, certain flowers… moreover, to discover the “Living” in all its definition.

What inspired your project? How did your interest in the subject come about?

It was during a residency conducted on the Mediterranean Coast in 2016 that I became interested in the desire to “tropicalize” the region during the second half of the 18th century. The resulting work, “Planting the Scene,” is a testament to this massive introduction of exotic plants to attract the first major “resort tourism” in modern history. Sensitive to the richness of the landscapes of this region, located between land and sea, I continue, in 2018, my research, my work and my explorations, observing the impact of human activity on the fauna and flora. Studying these spaces with my eyes as one studies a map, before planting the point of a compass to define a zone of prospection and action, I discover, with great enthusiasm, that there are still sectors that are difficult to access, but where wildlife abounds: adventures within reach! As surprising as it may seem, these preserved natural spaces are due to the historical presence of the army in this region. Untouched by human intrusion for 150 years, these territories constitute reservoirs of remarkable biodiversity.

How did the collaboration with the Navy start?

I obtain in 2019, the support of the DRAC- PACA, in order to engage a research work on these “conservatory spaces”, in the form of a “creation aid”. This confidence, granted by the deconcentrated services of the State, and the support of local political and cultural actors, allowed me to get in touch with the Maritime Prefecture of Toulon, through its “environment” Pole. The military authorities of the French Navy welcome my proposal with great interest and availability. Following numerous exchanges and several explorations of the military grounds of the peninsula of Saint-Mandrier sur Mer, forming the southern part of the small bay of Toulon and covering several hundred hectares, we have selected in cooperation with the army, some of these wild spaces. They will be called upon, within the framework of my work, to become “laboratory zones”, at the crossroads of the fields of research, artistic practices, and agricultural know-how, and whose objectives will lead to the invention and development of strategies to defend this fragile biodiversity. Alreadỳ devices are under study, developed in partnership with the university, in co-construction with the City- lab (Toulon), beekeepers, teacher-researchers and the participation of local craftsmen.

Could you explain to us the title “the unharmed of art”, which refers to practices outside the artistic milieu ?

The paradoxical union, at first sight, of art and armies turns out, in fact, to be a complementarity of competences: the one, to federate social practices, to invent new languages, the other, to commit itself for the defense of a major cause, on micro territories for which it has the responsibility, to use the extent of its means of action and to put its organizational qualities, its know-how, in the service of the aimed objective.
This “circulation of knowledge”, associated with a common issue, in this case “the ecological challenge”, can illustrate an awareness of the possible interactions between many fields, by confronting sometimes unexpected interlocutors. Exchanges favourable to the construction of a collective narrative and to a mutual human enrichment.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

“I’m doing my part,” said the hummingbird.

How do you imagine the world to come?

Given the current situation, this question is difficult to answer. Utopia would like us all to give meaning to what we do. As Albert Camus wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”, at the end of the book, “one must imagine Sisyphus happy!

Front page image: © Victor Remère, Fortin.

L’article COAL PRIZE 2020 : MEET VICTOR REMERE est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects, until the winner is announced.

Špela Petrič was born in 1980 in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She lives and works between Ljubljana and Amsterdam.

Špela Petrič, trained in natural sciences and holding a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology, is mainly dedicated to exploring new media. His artistic practice combines the different natural sciences and questions the limits of anthropocentrism through attempts at inter-species dialogue. By experimenting with unexpected artistic and scientific processes, she reveals the ontological and epistemological foundations of our technological societies. She has received several awards, such as the White Aphroid in Slovenia, the Bioart and Design Award (The Netherlands) and an award of distinction at Prix Ars Electronica (Austria).

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD : PL’AI

How can we invent new ways of caring for earthly life forms, at a time when computer abstraction and algorithmic governance have become our common reality? How can we respond to the profound contempt of the contemporary world for plants, neglecting their evolutionary capacities, their resilience and their crucial role in the biosphere?

To combat solastalgia, the contemporary eco-anxiety caused by environmental change, an interdisciplinary team of artists, scientists, engineers and programmers is attempting to answer these questions by creating plant-machines, robots capable of seeing themselves as plants. Through these plant-machines, PL’AI playfully investigates the behavior of plants to facilitate new interactions between the plant world and computer technologies, such as machine learning and artificial intelligence. A self-learning computer algorithm and mechanical appendages allow to enter the time and rhythm of the plant to play with it.

PL’AI invites the visitor to an original show, that of a game between a pea plant and an artificial intelligence (AI), the latter being able to know the plant, to predict its evolution, its growth, until retracting before the pea tendril clings to it. In real time, neither the machine nor the plant will seem to move, but thanks to a time-lapse video, the interplay between the artificial intelligence and the growing pea plant becomes perceptible.

The meeting between a plant and a robot, between non-human living entities and the digital and algorithmic universe, invites us to go beyond our human cultural and physical limits and to consider living creatures in a new light.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era?

I am currently in Amsterdam, and although the Netherlands has not imposed any restrictive measures on travel, I stay indoors most of the time.

Does this situation influence your artistic practice?

This pandemic is as disconcerting as it is fascinating to observe. Societal and political processes, which in other cases would have gone unnoticed, are now exposed. Of course, this implies the responsibility to act, to react, but how can we make sense of anything when we are faced with a tumult of bad information and emotions? For now, I welcome being overwhelmed, and letting the observations, readings and my sensibilities flow through me. Coincidentally, this is the perfect time to slow down, and this spring time is perfect for observing plants, their rebirth activity: a crucial task for my art, but an impossible luxury under normal circumstances.

Can you tell us about a particular event that influenced your relationship with nature and biodiversity?

I think there are many examples that have shaped my nuanced affection for living creatures. Beyond the joy and fascination of childhood, which almost everyone experiences, I was confronted with biodiversity through the lens of my studies. By observing ecosystems, biology teaches the aesthetics of abundance and the resilience that emerges from complexly woven relationships. In this sense, a biologist is rarely as neutral as science suggests – and for good reason, since we humans depend on the stability of these processes.

However, as I delved into the origins and uses of terms such as “biodiversity,” “ecosystem services,” or “nature” during my bioart practice, I realized that these concepts were situated in time and space, and emerged from different environmental conservation traditions. For example, the fields of Eastern Europe are a hotspot for biodiversity, but they are anthropogenic – without regular cutting or grazing, forests are rapidly invading them. Nature conservation is usually understood through the North American model of avoiding human intervention as much as possible, a model that has been used in the past for dubious purposes, for example to legitimize the deportation of indigenous peoples from the “pristine” Yellowstone National Park. Nature conservation is messy and culture-specific, which makes it even more enigmatic and difficult to act when talking about biodiversity in a universal and global sense.

How do you combine technology and nature in your work? You compare it to a game of hide and seek, could we also talk about a game of chess?

Because of the way technology is steeped in history, it pushes us toward certain uses and not others. This perpetuates certain views that are easy but hard to change. Given the role that technology has played in our contemporary awareness of nature (the vast machine of sensors, algorithms, and people that produce images of climate change; startling photos of endangered species; the computer models that update agricultural decision-making, etc.), it is important that the relationship between technology and living creatures be re-examined and reworked, and that our attitudes toward them change.

PL’AI is an installation that aspires to create the conditions for a game between a climbing plant and a robot driven by artificial intelligence. Unlike the productivity-oriented artificial intelligences that are currently at the forefront of agriculture, we have come to understand that plants exhibit very complex behavior that cannot be reduced to simple objectives. We need machine-learning here, because the trans-species game we propose escapes a logical, biological or aesthetic definition. In other words, we are interested in the enchantment dimension, where the plant and the artificial intelligence teach each other the rules of the game and show us how they play together.

What role do you see for artificial intelligence in protecting biodiversity?

We are living in a particularly interesting moment where computing coupled with big data has become a highly effective instrument for predicting and directing social behavior – in other words, a tool for governance. I mention this because it links to my first observation: that the decision that biodiversity should be protected still rests with people and their policies. As has been noted in animal studies, the only way to participate in human politics is through the use of language, which automatically excludes all those who cannot speak. Wouldn’t it be more radically relevant in this day and age, if rivers, ecosystems, fungal mycelia, lion pride or forests could somehow participate directly in the political arena, without needing to be represented (although considering forests or rivers as legal entities is already a big step in environmental justice)? Or as the Terra0 art project suggests, that a forest must sell its wood to buy the land on which it grows?

What is striking about this concept is that as artificial intelligences become more and more powerful hands, we are fighting for transparency, representation, privacy, equality, and justice without the help of algorithms. When we design “personal artificial intelligences” that would represent our individual interests and make digital ecosystems socially responsible, we need to think of ways to grant this possibility to non-human entities as well. After all, computers don’t care who the data comes from. The challenge is to consider how artificial intelligences could become the voice of a coral reef, a rainforest or a meadow.

What is your relationship to environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

I think our societies have been in systematic denial about our dependence on the environment for too long, intoxicated by the promise of control through scientific and technological progress. But, while we downplay the environmental institution, at the same time we observe how biodiversity loss, extractive practices, and monoculture agriculture contribute to disasters such as the covid-19 pandemic, antibiotic resistance, desertification, and climate change migration. Environmental commitment, which blurs the boundaries between my professional and private life, means for me to learn to live closely with agents and processes that may appear as a decoration but are in fact constitutional and indispensable to our existence.

I chose to work with plants precisely because I was disinterested in them. This metamorphosis began 6 years ago, when I wanted to understand how I could be insensitive to the organisms that are literally the lifeline of the entire biosphere. The journey through artistic research and creation has taught me not only to appreciate the plant being, but also the banal actions of discarding that we perform, unaware that through this, we maintain attitudes detrimental to the environment. I strive to create opportunities for encounters that surprise and attract, so that people can – in their own way – find a path to a familiarity with unlikely places that would reveal how ecology and economy can be articulated to care for what we depend on.

How do you imagine the world to come?

This is a difficult question, because what we imagine of the future is so light and ideological compared to the whirlwind it will be. I guess I’ve already talked a lot about my desires, so maybe all I can add is that I would like to be pleasantly surprised. I look forward to events that would surprise us, but not only with disastrous effects. I would like to meet unexpected allies that would make the world a more interesting, open, diverse and welcoming place.

L’article COAL 2020 AWARD : MEETING WITH SPELA PETRIC est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects, until the winner is announced.

Louis Guillaume was born in 1995 in Rennes, France. He lives and works in Rennes, France.

Louis Guillaume is a young artist of twenty-four years old, recently graduated from the School of Fine Arts in Rennes. His practice has been nourished by numerous trips between Europe, Asia and America as well as multiple collaborations with gardeners and botanists.

For his installations and sculptures, he gathers according to the seasons and realizes works often ephemeral, making the forms of the living his main axis of development and research.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD : SEASONS AND SPECIES, STRUCTURES OF LIFE

Like a hunter-gatherer in permanent search of what will serve him as material, Louis Guillaume surveys the environments like so many gardens where the harvesting and supply zones of natural resources are mapped, specific to each period of the year. He looks for natural alternatives to what exists industrially, sometimes calling upon forgotten traditions. Glue made from birch, pine resin or mistletoe, worm castings, it is the plastic and usual link that binds it to the material. Imitating the plant, he tends towards an autonomy of the means and takes care of his ephemeral realizations as one takes care of a plant, in gardener.

With Seasons and species, structures of the living, he wishes to develop these experiments centered on the seasons and the bad weather which guide his creation: picking up abandoned hornet’s nests after certain gales, taking advantage of poplars in May during their optimal pollination period, collecting turricula where it is most loaded with clay-like material, studying the internal honeycomb structure of the stipes and leaves of the Abyssinian banana tree in June, holly in July, angel hair in August, mistletoe in December, and then oyster shell for the rest of the months in -ber…

The question of time is omnipresent in the living. To get closer to it is to activate a deceleration, to open up to a world that must be observed to be understood and touched. Through this process of biomimetic digestion, Louis Guillaume builds a future oriented towards technical progress that is also found in these ever-innovative forms of life and these skills that have been present for much longer than we have.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era? How does this situation influence your artistic process?

I live it strangely well. I left my apartment and my studio in Rennes to come to my parents’ home in La Rochelle. I’m in a pretty nice confinement situation, surrounded by my family and a garden. Everyone around me is fine, that’s an important point. I live pretty much normally thanks to all those people who are mobilized on the ground and who do their best to prevent the world from falling into total chaos. Otherwise, I’m outside most of the time, in my garden which I never finish observing. I also think that it is a real opportunity for nature, which is in the middle of its reproduction period, to give its best to ensure its survival. Artistically, my sculptural practice has gone into hibernation, while the practice of drawing and painting, which I had buried since my entry into the Beaux-Arts, is regaining its colors. The current situation is full of constraints, we have to see how we can be inspired by them, working with the constraint is always something formative. I am also currently writing a screenplay about the snail. The idea came to me while I was gardening and a slug started making patterns on my t-shirt. The story will evoke situations of confinement, while basing the narrative around a young man, from an upsetting encounter, to a metamorphosis, evoking questions about gender.

Where does this sensitivity to life and plants come from? And what fascinates you about the seasons, the climatic conditions that govern an environment, the organic materials?

I have long had a sensitivity for plants, which my father, a garden enthusiast, was able to awaken and sharpen. On an artistic level, it is all forms of life and their behaviors that interest and inspire me: the potential of adaptation of plants, the way they cohabit in an environment, the network of interdependence of each element. In mimicry to the forms of the living, my creations are ephemeral, in constant evolution over time. For me, the term “work” encompasses the whole process of harvesting and transformation up to the plastic realization. Like a nomadic architect, everything is invented: from harvesting, to storage, to moving, to the moment of installation. All of this, in a cycle that continues through the seasons and movements. The installation or the “finished” plastic realization is only a stage in the life of the work. This is surely why I expose them in suspension, in a situation of expectation, fragility and lightness.

Did your training at the Beaux-Arts de Rennes encourage you to develop this interest in the living world? What is the place given to the living in the Fine Arts? More generally in contemporary art?

I think that it is more and more present within the Fine Arts. In particular I believe by the presence of Nicolas Floc’h, teacher at the school and very invested on these questions. The projects he sets up within EESAB play a role in raising awareness among students. I had the chance to evolve my practice by confronting it with his eyes. I then had the opportunity to do a residency on OAO, his marine exploration boat. This allowed me to discover a rich and still under-represented environment. I’m getting more and more interested. I also think of Kristina Solomoukha who brought me a lot of knowledge about the implication of art on the political world.

Working with the living, the organic, poses the question of the effects of time, because it is often about works that are not preserved. According to me, the stake is there finally: to consider/accept the work of art in its transformations, its instability, its ephemeral character.

Tell us about a process of transformation between the materialcoltand the plastic realization you get from it?

I don’t transform the material directly, at least not all the time. I try to preserve as much as possible the material I find, to be able to reuse it in my creations. This until exhaustion.

The real transformation is expressed by my plastic realization which must adapt to its displacement, its installation, then its storage and so on. That’s why they are often designed in kit form, to be arranged, modular and expandable according to the location.

Nevertheless, what often happens is that I take material that is pre-processed by natural processes. For example, the nests of Asian hornets. They are made of wood bark, from a multitude of trees – preferring the softer old wood to make their nests. By seizing it, I interfere in my turn in the evolution of the matter which already underwent the transformation of hornets. Then I powder the nest to make sculptures mixed with pine resin. The term transformation is a change of state, of forms.

In Mexico I worked with orange peels thanks to a merchant who peeled them into thin strips. A shape I had never seen before. I only had a few hours to take advantage of its elasticity to braid it. The heat crystallized the whole quickly. Later I realized that the ants had appropriated my realization in their turn. They dissected the skin in order to bring it to the ant farm. The circle was complete.

Creating from nature, what’s the difference? Can we say that art is already in nature? Nature in art? Also, how do you situate yourself in the art/craft border?

The art forms are in the nature indeed, one could not think to appropriate them and to make better. But these forms also appear through the eyes of man, it is precisely by combining and trying to cross these views that we can try to create interesting things. Establish a parallel relationship with the living and the human instead of a perpendicular relationship. To create from nature is to adopt a behavior of observation, of patience, a deceleration in the process of manufacture. Personally, I try to reconnect my practice with certain traditions, crafts, which work in contact with the material, which make us experience the material.

How do you envisage the exhibition of your ephemeral and moving works ?

I try to move away from the white cube but the work, as ephemeral and moving as it is, needs to be contextualized. For my graduation exhibition at the Beaux-Arts de Rennes, I chose to exhibit in the Thabor park, more specifically in the botanical greenhouses. This contextualization in this park allowed to find the link with the origin of the materials. My intention was also to encourage an approach for a wider audience. For this reason, in the future I would like to get closer to botanical parks and natural spaces for the exhibition of my work and keep this link with the environment of my research.

I also wish to develop my research around the live show and the performance. The materials I use lend themselves well to this. My creative process already has a choreographic and dreamlike part.

How do you think about the forms and temporalities of your sculptures ?

I get inspired by observing the behavior of plants, insects, animals, but above all, I choose the materials I want to work with, according to the characteristics of those I collect: their elasticity, their plasticity, their flexibility. I am inspired by the characteristics of the material, what it carries with it, what it has integrated to adapt and evolve.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

As an artist, I intend to be part of this collective movement of awareness and protection of life. To open my production with scientists and actors involved in the preservation of species, plants and the environment. Promote a creative process that respects the environment at all stages. Passing on to the younger generation is also essential. In collaboration with Béatrice Guilleman we have animated workshops in an elementary school around the questions of collecting natural materials or transforming them in order to conceive in three dimensions a world more in connection with nature. I also designed the scenography for the choreographer Corinne Duval who thought of a show for young children, entirely conceived from natural materials in order to sensitize the children to the awakening of the senses, to the sensations procured by the contact with the organic. In this work of sensitization, the aesthetic part is important because it allows a first catch, it allows to attract the glance from a form, from a sculpture, and to sharpen the curiosity of people. In the context of my exhibition at Le Thabor, for example, some people left the exhibition wanting to be more attentive to certain materials I had worked with. The preservation of our environments comes from our attention and the way we look at them.

How do you imagine the world to come?

I think that there is a growing awareness of the value of life. Around me I hear a lot about the desire to open farms, to get together, to reconnect with the environment. But this awareness must also be supported by concrete political decisions. That’s why I’m happy to be able to participate thanks to COAL in the IUCN Nature Congress to bring an additional voice to the association. It will be necessary to renew this link with the living that we have put aside. Bio-mimicry, bio-inspiration can also bring the part of progress that is essential to man. Man is an undisciplined phasma. It is necessary to assimilate the good movement to have on the branch not to break it, that one adopts the good behavior to melt in the environment without affecting it too much.

Featured image: © Louis Guillaume, Asian hornet nests recovered between October and December 2018. Presented on a pallet before being used and processed.

L’article COAL PRIZE 2020 : MEET LOUIS GUILLAUME est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects, until the winner is announced.

Anthony Duchêne was born in 1976 in Montpellier, France. He lives and works in Marseille, France.

Anthony Duchêne is a visual artist, graduated from the École supérieure des Beaux-arts de Marseille in 2006. He develops a work of sculpture, drawing and objects inspired by the functioning of nature and the animal world. Intertwining the universe of gustatory and olfactory sensations, his creations evoke figures of hybridizations and mutations of plant and animal species inspiring him to create new combinations. In 2012, he received the Science Po prize for contemporary art for his work “Empyreume”, a sculpture proposing a truncated wine tasting around the family of empyreumatic aromas. More recently, fascinated by living wines, he got closer to farmer-winemakers to study the functioning of the soil, the balance of nature and biodiversity.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD : I GRASS THE WORLD

Maintaining, preserving and developing the balance of nature and refusing all chemical inputs, such is the common will of a few winegrowers and farmers who oppose the diktats of modern agriculture. It is with them that Anthony Duchêne has been collaborating for three years for J’enherbe le monde. With their help, he creates plastic works but also installations in their vineyards in order to make visible and tangible their role in the preservation and development of biodiversity.

Anthony Duchêne’s approach is based on scientific studies, farming know-how and experimentation: At Domaine Ledogar (Corbières), he uses sound diffusion to stimulate the immune system and naturally treat the vines against fungus attacks without resorting to chemicals; at Domaine Léon Barral (Faugères), he creates a work that can welcome and retain bats, which in turn can naturally fertilize the soil; At Domaine Sicus (Southern Catalonia), he proposes to make wine-making amphorae out of clay from the land itself, in order to produce a typically endemic wine and to put an end to the exploitation of oak trees to make barrels.

These are the exchanges, research and observations carried out with the winegrowers that inform and feed the whole project which, in the long run, aims to share, in the form of a documentary, the methods used by these farmer-winemakers and to transmit the values of a polyculture respectful of the living.

Describe your current environment, how do you live this covid-19 era? How does this situation influence your artistic process?

The confinement of the Covid-19 did not change my way of working nor did it stifle my approach. For practical reasons, I have simply privileged research and reflection to the plastic realization.

What was your first sensitive relationship with living things?

The first sensitive relationship with living beings was revealed by a strong interest in the animal world. Interested by the form but also by the way of life of the animal species, I started to develop a hybrid work by inserting gradually other fields of the living which are the vegetable and mineral world.

How was your project born?

Passionate about wine and the history of cooking in general, I have oriented my research towards the practices of the Peasant-Winegrowers who favour the respect of the soils while tirelessly seeking to perfect their knowledge of the functioning and balance of nature.

How do you implement artistic approaches in an agricultural environment?

I grass up the world was born after two years of observation; travelling through the vineyards across Europe, in contact with the field and its actors, I nourished and developed this approach by relying on the atypical and precursory techniques of these Peasant-Winegrowers; by proposing to them a form of collaboration consisting in realizing works implanted on their plots. They have a real role to play in biodiversity.

How do you articulate your scientific and vinicultural knowledge with the playful and plastic imagination of your works?

I first articulate all these themes around the notion of language, and then compose a work of hybridization through sculpture and drawing.

There has always been a playful and imaginary form in my work, certainly due to the influence of Belgian artists. But also a medieval inspiration, since this period and its representation are marked by rurality; aspect that I wish to defend in my aesthetic approach, attentive to the values of ancestral practices which tend to return.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

On a personal level, and in line with my approach, I favor products from responsible and environmentally friendly cultures, especially in the animal sector. Also I defend and support the locavore system which tends to return to agro-sylvo-pastoralism. Obviously, the defense and consumption of live wines.

How do you imagine the world to come?

Let’s stay natural!

Featured image: © Anthony Duchêne, Les Kamikazes, wood and oil on ceramic, 2019

L’article COAL 2020 PRIZE : MEET ANTHONY DUCHÊNE est apparu en premier sur COAL.

As part of the COAL 2020 Award, ten artists’ projects have been nominated as finalists for this eleventh edition. Each day, we offer you a meeting with one of the nominated projects.

Minerva Cuevas was born in 1975 in Mexico City, Mexico. She lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico.

Minerva Cuevas is a conceptual artist who develops projects with strong political resonance. Socially engaged, and offering opportunities for exchange and participation, his art transgresses boundaries and encourages us to reconsider our place in the world, collectively and individually. His favorite themes are natural resources and indigenous cultures, colonialism, alternative economies, biotechnology, self-reliance and extinction. She has recently been exhibited at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City), at the Whitechapel Gallery (London). She has participated in group exhibitions at the South London Gallery (London), the Guggenheim (New York), the Musée d’art moderne de la Ville de Paris (Paris), the Centre Pompidou (Paris). Minerva Cuevas also won the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) award.

PROJECT NOMINATED FOR THE COAL 2020 AWARD: MONARCH, THE BUTTERFLY THAT COULD TELL THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD

Mexico is one of the 17 so-called megadiverse countries that alone contain almost three quarters of the Earth’s biological diversity. Among the emblematic Mexican species that are particularly threatened is the Monarch butterfly, whose population has fallen by up to 97% in a decade. Twice a year, this migratory butterfly travels, in groups of millions of individuals, more than 4000 kilometers from Canada to hibernate in the south, mainly in central Mexico. Although it weighs less than a gram and measures only about ten centimeters, the monarch butterfly alone tells the story of our world and the collapse of all ecosystems on the American continent.

Artist Minerva Cuevas’ video installation project takes place in the heart of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in the state of Michoacán. Every autumn, nearly a billion of them come to color the forests of oyamel firs. The artist reveals the lesser known aspects of their ecosystem such as the decline of the Algodoncillo and Cempazúchitl flowers, also orange. Essential to pollinators, these herbaceous plants, like nearly 140 other species of the milkweed group, are now disappearing under the effect of glyphosate associated with transgenic crops in the American midwest. The artist also values the essential role of the Aboriginal communities that protect them.

For a long time, in the local Náhuatl and Purépecha traditions, it was believed that the souls of the dead traveled in the orange color of the wings of these butterflies that arrived each year in Mexico during the celebrations of the traditional Festival of the Dead. The film will be accompanied by an original score by composer Pablo Salazar.

Describe your current environment: how do you live in this era of covid-19 ?

Since all my professional trips have been cancelled, I no longer leave my studio in Mexico City. This was my apartment originally, so there’s plenty of space to live and work. The building is located in the historic center, a very lively place. So I was able to observe the streets being emptied of their commercial activities.

My studio is a beautiful space, with a large library, nice to work in, but I’m getting tired of looking at screens. Being indoors for so long, I started feeding an ever-growing number of city birds from my window.

Has this situation influenced your artistic practice ?

I have read articles that analyze the situation and the potential consequences of this crisis. It’s interesting to see the contrasts between scientific views and political approaches. Unfortunately, I am used to assessing and witnessing many other environmental and social tragedies, so I see covid-19 as part of a larger crisis.

Can you tell us about an event that changed your relationship with nature and biodiversity?

I shook hands with a monkey on a trip to Paraguay.

Apart from that, I would say that despite being born in Mexico City, I come from an indigenous family from the Mixtec region of Oaxaca, so I experienced a childhood very strongly linked to agriculture and animals but also to the communal ways of life in rural areas.

How did you come to work on the Monarch butterfly ?

This project is, and at the same time is not, about Monarch butterflies. The film focuses on those other elements of biodiversity that sustain the life and migration conditions of the Monarchs.

Michoacán is an area that has interested me for a long time, especially because of its great biodiversity which depends a lot on the lakes of the region. It is this specific ecosystem that brings the Monarchs to stop there. I have also been following Donna Haraway’s writings: she recently came to Mexico City and Michoacán to give lectures and visit the Monarque Shrine, so it was a coincidence and a great pleasure to be able to share a little with her. I think his writings about kinship are extremely relevant today. I love his perspective, which is deeply scientific and very sensitive at the same time. His book Staying with the Trouble includes a whole chapter about the politics of water in Mexico City and Michoacán, and the beautiful story of the link between peasant communities and the butterfly. This exchange led me to invest in more in-depth and specific research.

In most of your work, one can see a bitter critique of economic and political power structures, whereas in this project you are studying a specific ecosystem: does this show a renewal of your interest in the relationship with macros and micro elements?

There is nothing more important in today’s economy and global politics than depleted natural resources, be it water, forests, minerals, agriculture or oil. All the processes of colonization of nature and indigenous societies as well. I think that nowadays it is more and more evident that these spheres are linked together and cause the negative impact of extractive entities.

On the contrary, I would find the opposite really strange – not to think about politics and oppression when talking about ecology. I see my work as an intellectual and aesthetic exercise when the formal solutions and references are diverse, but everything is also linked to the research I conduct. I mean research here not only as reading documents but also as very specific exchanges with scholars and communities. It always includes diverse political positions and it always reflects the world in which we live, counting also what is not always documented.

What is your environmental commitment as an artist and citizen?

It is ecological and not only environmental, so it is very broad. My life and my work are situated in the same space, where ethics and politics are one and the same act that governs each of my decisions, whether they are aesthetic or personal.

How do you imagine the world to come?

I often say that the future was yesterday. The future is the action, the actions that we have done yesterday and today, for me it is not an imaginary projection. We build it, we fight for it. Today, I think that this concept is particularly far from the notion of utopia, for example. The ecological crisis is so advanced that everything has become much more immediate and urgent. There is no room for utopia when we have to manage the emergency now.

Front page image: © JHVEPhoto. Monarch butterflies drinking water.

L’article COAL PRIZE 2020 : MEET MINERVA CUEVAS est apparu en premier sur COAL.