Instant Diamonds

PR: It’s one of the many deep contradictions in which we live. These things are often also beautiful objects in themselves, made by us for us. I call them instant diamonds. Even they are made to be thrown away. I love plastic and many things made from it, and I feel sorry that we turn it so quickly into waste. But the idea that we use the resources of the earth, in this case, oil, billion years pressed shrimps, just to burn for energy is even more to ask. But I am one of the people who is hopeful that we can change more renewable energy in time—more solar, more wind and maybe also more nuclear; I think we abandoned that too quickly, but that’s another point. As a studio, we work much by recycling. For example, the lot of curtains we use for the sound dampening or the carpets that are in the installations are things that we use as long as possible. All the pillows we wash and reuse. And depending on the place, we might even use things from other artists. For example, at the Hayward Gallery a decade ago, there was a Tracey Emin exhibition before me, and she had one dark blue room. I needed a dark room, so why repaint it? Why not just use it? So I asked her if it would be okay.

JB: It’s a great thing when an artist is already interested in doing this kind of work. It makes for synergy. We’ve hired a sustainability consultant and we’re in the process of making that a full-time, in-house position now. I’ve been learning about considering carbon emissions from the very beginning in preparing plans: things like shipping speeds, different kinds of shipping containers, recycling many things, whether it’s walls or exhibition materials or even material that’s used for art itself. Something really exciting that just happened is that we reignited a project first started by Phillipe Vergne, one of our former directors, in which the Grand Avenue building is wrapped in large-scale artworks by artists. Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Jonas Wood each participated in this project earlier, and Derek Fordjour, who’s an amazing painter really interested in civic address and in bringing the museum outside of the walls into the city, has just unveiled a piece called ‘Sonic Boom,’ a reference to the renowned Jackson State University marching band in Mississippi, known as the Sonic Boom of the South, and to the history of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in general. It’s a fantastic piece. But it is also an enormous piece of plastic. So we looked into the most environmentally friendly inks and plastics that are being produced. We had these conversations with Derek and mentioned our concerns, and as we were talking he lit up and said, ‘No one ever asks an artist about things like this at the beginning of the process. And this is something that’s really critical to me, too, and that I’ve been thinking about too.’ So, when his wrap comes down he will repurpose this material, several thousand feet of it, and he’ll utilize it in another form for a future artwork! So the idea of pre-planning in this way with artists will hopefully become second nature. I think many of them will want to support the practical efforts but also to be involved in research and development around projects where they can make a difference in exhibitions and the museum’s overall commitment.

RK: Structurally and procedurally how do you think it will change the way the museums work? Museums typically already plan years in advance.

JB: We do, and so this is in part about getting the staff on board, constantly assessing practices and plans, which takes effort and time. But some of it will also be in the day-to-day. For instance, our sustainability consultant, Simone Paz, just integrated organics recycling so that at the office, when people eat, they’re able to recycle the food waste that would have ended up in the landfill. We’re also looking at printers, reducing and consolidating machines so the office limits resource use and waste. Some things are that simple and some things are really big and fundamental.

PR: It’s very important to focus on small things but then not to forget the bigger. May I show you my favorite graphic, which I have had up on my wall here in Zurich in the studio for the last two years?

It was a global GHG abatement chart that was used somewhere by the consulting company McKinsey and I came across it. I love it so much because it shows all the things we can do to reduce CO2 and how effective they all are and how much they cost or yield. So, for example, waste recycling is so effective and costs relatively little money as an economic process. Coal retrofits, as you can see, are quite effective in reducing pollution but also very costly. Switching from incandescent lights to LED is very cost saving and wonderful but in the larger scheme doesn’t do as much in reducing carbon. And then, in contrast, making new buildings more environmentally friendly costs not so much and is very effective. Pastureland conversion costs almost nothing and is extremely effective! It’s fascinating to see these things and think about them.

RK: You were talking about nuclear energy and we can see that the benefits related to the costs are really great.

PR: It’s one of the widest bars on the chart, which is why I was mentioning it before. In the art world of course there’s a lot that we do with transport, so you look at the line for motor-system efficiency. I like the whole process of thinking that it’s not only how we go forward with reducing emissions, but also what we can do about fundamentally changing our behavior.

RK: Looking at this, even though it has nothing to do with the art world, I also really like the sound of rice management, a crop which takes huge resources to grow.

PR: It’s actually a great example. It’s a crop that has a huge effect on the planet, and many decades ago the Rockefeller Foundation and other research foundations did work to improve rice crops through mutation, to make the quality better and to create strains that needed less water, fewer resources. I like to use the example of the Rockefeller work to tease my left-wing friends about where beneficial things can all come from. [Laughs]

RK: I guess occasionally it does come from the plutocracy and other unexpected places.

JB: Wasn’t Nixon the biggest funder of the National Endowment of the Arts? And he also created the Environmental Protection Agency! How times have changed.

PR: It’s good to remember that humans are in bubbles. We in the art world are often in one and it limits thinking, hurts our ability to find new ways to solve problems because we get stuck in the same circles of thought. But then if we look closer, it’s always a bit more complex. Nevertheless, the art world can be a very effective force for changing public opinion about sustainability, but in the end, we all know it will be political change, fundamental changes in laws and tax policy and enforcement and incentive, that will make the big difference. It’s good to model better practices, as the art world and art industry are slowly adapting to do, but some incentives for better technologies and practices will have to be legislated and industries compelled. Let’s support them. And there has to be justice in it, because the poor countries, when they come out of poverty, cannot be asked not to use the energy they need. We just all have to invent better ways to use it.

JB: These things obviously are intertwined, social justice and environmental work. One of the best pieces of advice I got from somebody who worked in both areas was to not rely on changing hearts and minds. You can’t necessarily change people’s belief systems. What you change are the protocols and policies. And creating incentives is the best way forward. It’s about establishing shared meanings but it’s more about what you get rewarded for and what is made easy and what you just can’t do anymore. I just read this morning that the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County are very close to phasing out single-use plastics in foodservice and doing away with many uses of Styrofoam. So they just won’t be available anymore in this jurisdiction. It won’t be as if anyone has to make a choice anymore, which I think of as a little liberating.

PR: That’s super, because we’ve had the problem for a long time now of the labeling telling us that we’re using recycled or recyclable plastic, and became clear that was a lie. It gave us permission to use more and create more, just contributing to the problem.

RK: This is maybe jumping ahead a little bit, but are there, on a state level or federal, programs available to museums now to help encourage use of more solar, for example, or other alternative energy systems?

JB: There are things happening and one thing that reminds me to highlight is that a lot of this work is deeply collaborative. It’s never just one institution. MOCA, for example, is part of the GCC, the Gallery Climate Coalition, and we helped support the formation of an LA chapter. We’ve gotten grants from the Frankenthaler Climate Initiative and from the Los Angeles Low Carbon Leaders pilot program. So, infrastructural change is supported both on the local and state level and by the field. We are looking at installing solar on The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA building now, for example, but to the point of Pipi’s graph, it’s very expensive to do. So we’re working on finding funding for that. I think California is obviously, like New York, going to be a space where those dollars are going to become more available.

PR: May I say something I’ve always wanted to say to New Yorkers?

RK: Please.

PR: It’s probably a topic you’ve already discussed. But why in the city does it seem as if you cool lower in the summer than is naturally comfortable and also heat higher in winter than is comfortable? So that you go into a place in the summer in New York and it’s almost chilled, for example. And we all know that cooling requires a lot more energy than heating.

RK: I don’t have an answer, but you’re right, especially in the summer. It’s a strange thing.

JB: Studies have been conducted showing that changing indoor temperatures even by a degree can save so much money and power. Pipilotti, wasn’t the temperature something you actively engaged with for the show in your space at MOCA Geffen?

PR: Yes, I always ask: ‘Can we have it a bit warmer?’ Because it always seems too cold to me in many spaces, cold in an unfriendly way, in particular, if it’s warm outside like in LA.

JB: It was actually one of the first conversations I came into when I started here, asking: ‘What is the temperature of the space? What does it mean? How do people experience it? What does it take? What’s the experience of the exhibition if you’re a little too cold or a little too hot? I thought it was really interesting.

RK: Pipi, when you think about things like temperature, it concerns the environment in one sense but do you also think about the temperatures of bodies in the spaces as an element of the work?

PR: Oh yeah. Our exhibitions try to really be welcoming to bodies. There is so much video all the time coming to you wherever you are. But if you come to a museum, the difference is that you bring your body and of course, there are different ideas of what is good and right as far as temperature and what the level of clothing does for that, and for your experience.

JB: It’s funny, I recently read an article about some of the gender- and race-specific assumptions embedded in the museum experience and, as you might expect, what is considered a comfortable temperature has historically been determined by white men. I remember as a curator when I first learned that the midline height of a painting was 60 inches, which is geared to the height of the average white man. So I’ve always hung at 58 inches instead. Such ongoing conventions are supposedly keyed to a neutral body, which of course doesn’t exist.

PR: I read also about research that shows that men prefer it to be colder than women, which is certainly linked to the way many men and women dress, women often wearing less.

JB: What’s amazing thinking about those kinds of things is the response to your show, Pipilotti, which has been incredible. People have been so grateful there’s so much pleasure and joy in it. There are also many complicated emotions and effects. But it’s a space where people want to come and stay and so things like the temperature are very important. Those things are related and it’s really beautiful.

PR: It’s so cool that you say that, no pun intended. I’ve been surprised at how well our exhibition is being taken in by the people who come. My wish is that they come, and they think of it as their own common backyard. And I’m pleased that has worked.

JB: You sent a great phone picture that you took in which you can see a big group of teenagers sitting at the table in the show reading the brochure. Just hanging out and reading intently.

PR: Yeah. Four cool-looking young guys, all sitting there and all reading our MOCA brochure!

JB: I don’t want to go too far down a rabbit hole, but I think you’ll both appreciate this: The feminist philosopher Jane Bennett has written about the cellular reality of what we put into our bodies impacting how we think. Her argument is, in essence, what you eat translates into how you think and how you operate as a social being. I think it’s something that’s key. We’re cellular beings. We bring things in, and we send them out, and there’s an ecology of being a human being among other beings. And for artists, that ecology of course plays out too. It’s a very interesting political argument because it’s about sustainability, but it’s also about ideology in a very particular way. Pipilotti, the dinner celebrating your show was sustainable, correct?

PR: Yes, it was vegetarian, made by the restaurant Manuela, which as a starting point uses as much local produce as possible. We also made the decision to print a physical brochure for the show, because there are accessibility questions for some visitors, depending on whether they have smartphones or computers. But we printed on the most sustainable, recycled paper we could find. So, yes, there’s a bit of paper waste, but maybe they keep it or use it for something else, which makes me think of the four R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle and rethink.

RK: In the context of your work, would you rethink any of it, looking back now, in the context of sustainability?

PR: Well, it was always something that concerned me. And I’ve never really made a huge amount of material stuff in my career, so it was never me leaving tons of sculptures around the world or trying to ship it. And I’ve always recycled things in my work, which is a tradition of many artists that I have loved. It’s an interesting thing that, so often in the last century or more, artists work through recycling or engaging with so-called garbage.

RK: From Schwitters, at least, all the way to you. It’s a great tradition, which has produced some of my favorite works of art.

PR: This idea of recycling comes with a lot of different reasons. The material has stories in it already, lives from other uses, but the tradition also gives a sense of caring, paying attention, thinking twice. It’s so many character traits that are also important for all the environmental reasons. Like Johanna, I like that idea that it’s practical in one sense, but it’s also philosophical and tender and how humans should think about treating each other.

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‘Pipilotti Rist: Big Heartedness, Be My Neighbor,’ is on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, until 6 June 2022.