coe037_everyday-ogres.mp3

Speaker1: [00:00:24] Welcome back to the Cultures of Energy podcast, everyone. This is brought to you by the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences at Rice University, and we're so thrilled to have you with us listening today. We have a really nice conversation with the artist, Tanya Morel, and I'm trying my best to get my my best French accent in there. But I'm sorry if I've if I've done it wrong. Tanya is a wonderful artist who's been working for 50 years, maybe even a little bit more. Many, many decades.

Speaker2: [00:00:57] 50 years.

Speaker1: [00:00:59] Five zero. Yeah, it's interesting artist. It really is especially to be an active artist because she's been producing stuff all along and and having shows all over the world and at very fancy places like the Pompidou Centre. So, yeah, we have a really nice conversation with her and she's an inspiration. And with her is Alison Meyers, and Alison is also lovely, bright, wonderful woman, who is a PhD student in art history at the University of Texas at Austin and so

Speaker2: [00:01:34] And also the curator.

Speaker1: [00:01:35] She curated the show that we'll talk

Speaker2: [00:01:37] About OK, yeah, in the podcast, but it's called Everyday Ogre's, and we're going to put a link up in the in our liner notes here so you can find out information

Speaker1: [00:01:46] On it, right? So you can go check it out. If you're anywhere in the Texas region, the vicinity of Texas,

Speaker2: [00:01:53] The Greater

Speaker1: [00:01:53] Austin, the Greater Austin

Speaker2: [00:01:55] Region, yeah.

Speaker1: [00:01:56] Yeah, it's just it's such a sprawl, I don't know. Yeah. So if you're anywhere nearby, you could jet on in for that, and I think it would be quite satisfying. We we talk quite a bit about the show during the podcast, but we were just talking now about the qualities of conceptual art and how, you know, how do you find a road into conceptual art? How do you enter into it as a viewer or an experiencer? And so here's my question to you, co-host.

Speaker2: [00:02:25] I'm ready and ready for it this time.

Speaker1: [00:02:27] So if you could choose to have facility? And in fact, let's say expertise in any form of of conceptual work visual. Ok. Audio or sonorous, maybe. Ok, tactile or constructed nice infrastructural. Or olfactory? Which which realm of artistic expertise would you choose?

Speaker2: [00:03:02] Are you saying that like if my art or my art skill would be to smell things really well?

Speaker1: [00:03:05] No, no, no, no. It's about me. I'm sorry. I didn't make that clear as a creator, not as an encounter, as a as a creator. So if you could have this incredible facility with representing things in the visual domain or the audio domain or the tactile domain or the olfactory domain, which would you choose? And I think listeners, maybe you want to think about this, too.

Speaker2: [00:03:29] Yeah, you definitely want to think about it, too. I just like so I like the idea of having expertise in smell and then also in touch would be great. But I should know you kind of both sound. Definitely sound. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It's just my own background. Is this sometimes musician and I already feel like that's that's what I like to. That's what were you laughing at me? It's so mean she's laughing at me while I'm talking. I'm trying to talk about my deep, my deep historical commitment to sound. It's true. I used to play bass and guitar and before I became a semi-professional podcaster. Now you're cracking me up. I don't know. Like, OK, because you're wearing headphones, wearing headphones. That's right. So I can already hear. I can already hear my own dulcet tones right in my ear.

Speaker1: [00:04:17] It's not even that funny, but it it's kind

Speaker2: [00:04:19] Of almost sounds like you're you're making us choose superhero powers. Like you're saying, like, do you have like Eagle Eye Vision where I can or like, you know, the nose ability to see through the walls. And I think it's just because we're living in the marvel, you know, era of of, you know, big Hollywood blockbusters that

Speaker1: [00:04:38] I'm going to ask you about what kind of spandex suit you want to don, I guess. So the idea is go back and you're in the audio audio realm.

Speaker2: [00:04:47] Well, OK, let me just say this about conceptual art. I think the the amazing thing is that it really does have this ability to create new synapses and create new experiences. Well, that's nice. Yeah. And that's what's great about it. And you know, you and I and I'll turn this back on you now. You and I had a chance to do not to become artist, but to commit an act of art, I guess. Does that the right way? You said?

Speaker1: [00:05:17] Yeah, that maybe makes it sound more radical than it

Speaker2: [00:05:19] Was in Denver with the help of our friends at the Ethnographic Terminally, a collective to put together a installation in a beautiful gallery based on our wind wind power research called Alien

Speaker1: [00:05:32] Politics. And we got to talk to Tanya and Allison about that, and they both liked it. They liked the idea of it just having it described. I mean, it's not the same as being

Speaker2: [00:05:41] There, right? But go ahead. Do you want to?

Speaker1: [00:05:44] Well, I was going to say that this was so there's a kind of false separation between these different domains of practice that I just laid out. You know, the visual, the audio, the tactile and the the olfactory right because of course, you can pull so many of them together in any kind of work of art. Maybe the olfactory is a little more tricky. I think that's a that's a more difficult one that we haven't spent as much time working on. But in alien politics, we had a wind house. Yes, where the wind was in the house instead of the wind being outside, you know, battering the outside of the house. The wind was inside the house, battering the experiencer, and it was definitely an experiencer. It's not. It's not being a viewer because when you're getting hit with that powerful wind, which was being generated by none other than a special effects fan that had been imported from Hollywood or environs, yeah, it it. It is a different kind of experience because you're getting blown and blistered and your hair is flying all over the place and it's it's agitating and the way that a strong wind is right.

Speaker2: [00:06:50] And in that case, we were trying to capture something. It was something representational about it in that we were trying to capture this very strong, irritating wind that's at the center of all the research we're doing. The research we're doing wouldn't happen without this, like amazingly powerful and kind of also occasionally terrible wind, right? And so to bring that into the experience of the research seemed to be a good idea, and I think that was something. So I don't know if it really counts as conceptual or not. It was more of an installation, but it was one in which,

Speaker1: [00:07:21] Yes, there was totally I don't think it's it's a little more representative, right? And there was vision, there was sound and there were images. So there was vision

Speaker2: [00:07:29] And there was kind of the force of the wind.

Speaker1: [00:07:31] So yeah, and there was maybe even some discursive confusion in some ways because we had a wonderful poet named Victor Tehran at the very end of the experience. You get to hear Victor and he's reading and being Azar or Zapotec Isma Zapotec, which is a language that I'm going to say. Probably no one who visited the installation actually understood. And so it created this interesting sort of cognitive experience or dissonance, maybe even. Of wondering, you know, what that language is and what's being said and how can I understand it? And it's obviously a poem, it's powerful, but I can't quite get my head around it, so it sort of challenges the cerebrum. It kind of challenges the intellect in some ways to try and actually it it challenges the intellect to let go of itself as an agent and forces other embodied experiences to take over because you can't quite comprehend exactly.

Speaker2: [00:08:35] And that just to bring it back to the general point. I think that's why art matters, at least to what we're doing. I mean, we write a lot. We work with words where wordsmiths of a certain kind, we we write things up. We circulate those. But it's one thing to write a paragraph about how the wind feels, and it's another thing to like have it blowing in your face.

Speaker1: [00:08:53] Yeah, I don't know which one is more challenging. Well, maybe writing the paragraph actually is more difficult,

Speaker2: [00:09:00] But but in the way you'll never really get there,

Speaker1: [00:09:02] You never get the feeling

Speaker2: [00:09:03] That the feeling, yeah, I mean, you can write it in a beautiful way and somebody can kind of imagine themselves in that situation, but you'll never quite feel it. So, yeah, so anyway, this is a long, a long digression to say that, you know, at least in art, why do we talk about this? Oh, usually we're asking about what kind of art special art superpower is. I hope to have,

Speaker1: [00:09:22] Because you didn't even turn that question back on me, but it's OK because I wasn't going to really answer you anyway. I was just going to leave a teaser. You're just going

Speaker2: [00:09:29] To dodge the question,

Speaker1: [00:09:30] Ok? Well, no, I was going to say that I did a really cool installation many years ago that had the old factory at its center. That's right. But I'm not even going to go into it because that's a different podcast.

Speaker2: [00:09:41] You will people will have to wait for another podcast. That's right for that information for now. Welcome to the conversation with Tanimura.

Speaker1: [00:09:50] Go, Tanya. Welcome back, dear listeners, we're really, really pleased to have two wonderful people in the studio with us today. And I will try and pronounce properly the French name that I may bungle, but I will try. And then, Tanya, you can re pronounce it for me. So it's Tanya milward.

Speaker3: [00:10:20] It's very good.

Speaker1: [00:10:21] Oh God. God, thank God. I only had to do it once. And Alison Miers blissfully easily easy for my American accent. We're so glad to have you both here. Tanya is a very well-known eminent artist who has worked in France and all over the world for many, many years, and so we're really thrilled to have you here to talk about this recent show and your recent work. And Alison, you've been the conduit for this show in Austin that's currently up and running that we're going to encourage people to see. And you're a PhD student in our history department at UT Austin. So welcome to you both. We're glad to have you here.

Speaker3: [00:10:57] Thank you. Very happy to be here. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:11:00] So can you tell us the story? The well, the name, the name of the work that you're sharing is everyday ogres. Yes. And I would love to hear how that name came about. And you know what? The kind of what the thinking or the principles or the vision behind it were such a great, provocative name.

Speaker3: [00:11:21] In fact, it is Alison who found the title on behalf of a conversation I had with a curator for one video, which was called Once Upon a Time. And for me, when I was editing this video, the machine was for me, like an argus in the corner to the grim. I don't know how the

Speaker4: [00:11:46] Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

Speaker3: [00:11:48] Thank you very much. And then I will let Alison explain all the things. The funny thing is that in American, it's very good every day, August, but in French it is impossible.

Speaker4: [00:12:02] Okay.

Speaker1: [00:12:05] That's nice, Quotidiano.

Speaker3: [00:12:07] Nice way. The journalist who who wrote an article about the show, he found it very, very good what he called UG Industrial Industrial Augers of Stanmore.

Speaker4: [00:12:23] Mm hmm. Yeah. For me, I was so struck reading that interview because I because in this video, it's set in the forest. And so there really is this feeling of the machines that are part of the forest industry really coming to life as these animal like things. And so ogres was really evocative for me. And when we were filming the work, the new work that we filmed in Houston, of the oil refineries, I was struck by how spectacular, but also how every day these things are that they really are part of this everyday landscape in these along the ship channel along the Gulf Coast. So for me, the everyday ogres where these monsters that kind of live in our midst and are really structure our lives in an everyday basis, but really are these sort of spectacular beastie cities and beastie machines so that for me, that's where the the title of the show came from.

Speaker1: [00:13:15] It's great when there's a kind of haunting effect, too, and I like this connection to the Brothers Grimm that makes a lot and makes a lot of sense, actually in terms of of how the work presents itself. We don't have the videos here in our audio format, so I wonder if we could kind of talk through what they look like and feel like. I know that's kind of banal to use words to describe something that's a, you know, a piece of video art.

Speaker3: [00:13:43] I will call those in order to to be able like phantoms. Mm hmm. Uh, so there is the the horrible phantom eating up the forest, destroying totally the forest. And we get such a feeling of anxiety that at one time we think that it is our own body which is destroyed it. It really happens like this. The other is is more European in a way that there is a foreign European. There is this how do freight train? It has been shot in Germany. And there is a freight train coming very slowly in front of a heap of metal. It has been shot in the largest dumping area from metal, a largest European dumping area from metal. Mm hmm. And so this kind of hip we have seen in Europe and with Europe and have seen that so many times on TV, it is in fact the heaps of the dead of the corpse. Of Auschwitz. It looks exactly the same and having this freight. German freight train passing by very slowly. So we have an overlapping of images just like in Once Upon a Time, The Forest, the deforestation. We have this machine. We have this overlapping of augers that we heard about when we were small, you know, monsters. Then there is this FATA Morgana video, which is completely different from the others and which has been shot here in Texas and in Pasadena.

Speaker3: [00:15:40] It is, it looks like a golden palace. Beautiful, golden light. Extremely fascinating. And it is at a very slow pace, and we see the the fumes, you said, the fumes, the smoke, the smoke, white smoke. But in the film it is golden smoke going out and making like a love embrace with the metallic structure, which is rigid. And the fume is going all around this, caressing the metallic structure for two to go more and more into the sky and disappearing there as if. It was nothing, but in fact, and the the sound is a sound industrial sound, but which is based on breathing that one doesn't recognize at once because I would never give the things it is always, it's up to you to find it. You know, just like it was up to me to find out, you know, because in my work, I live a lot of plays for the viewer. I am I am doing a work for the viewer. And so I think so it is called FATA Morgana because before they were mirage in northern Europe on the sea of beautiful golden Pallas and the salesmen were losing their way. They were so fascinated by this mirage that they were losing their way and dying. And for me, FATA Morgana is about invisible death. Mm-hmm.

Speaker4: [00:17:39] I think I would also add that, at least from a curatorial perspective, when we organized the exhibition, we wanted it to feel as immersive as possible. And so when viewers enter the space, it's very, very dark and all the three videos are as large as we could possibly make them in the space, and that each one has a very distinctive sound composition that goes with it. So the first video that Tanya mentioned Once Upon a Time has this sort of chainsaw industrial loud sound that swallows you up. And then the face to face the second video has more of how would you describe a tiny, like a metallic accumulation sound? And then, as she mentioned, FATA Morgana has the sort of breathing sound, so the sound and the video are both two different but connected parts of the whole installation.

Speaker1: [00:18:30] Yeah, I mean, the first piece Once Upon a time or the first of the the trinity of pieces is really actually quite disturbing and disruptive, at least to this viewer or sensor. And last night, as we were, we're watching the films and watching the work there was I don't know if you notice there was a little girl in the audience who was probably about six. She had her little doll with her and as the as it was unfolding, I thought, My God, she must be terrified because what you see is you see this sort of industrial monster that looks very much like a metallic praying mantis, which is a particularly eerie looking insect. I think with the big head and you see this yellow steel head sort of grabbing these trees and literally stripping them of all of their limbs and all of their leaves. And I think, Tanya, you said last night, it's like, these are the tears. Is this what they call it? The tears as they're stripping off?

Speaker3: [00:19:30] No, sorry to. Not exactly. In fact, when there are, how do you loggers? In fact, uh, this machine cannot do its work with the large douglas' very large tree. So for very large trees, it is loggers who are doing that. You know, with chainsaw, they stopped. And at first, I begin to work with them because I wanted to them to believe that I was interested in the loggers, which I was absolutely not. But I played a game, you know, I wanted the machine, you know, and they explained me that when the tree is falling down, then after it's very dangerous. You have a lot of small branches falling and on the video, it looks like a curtain coming down, you know? And that is what they say are the the the the tears of the trees, I say.

Speaker1: [00:20:37] So that's the weeping from the forest. Yeah. And I think one of the striking things for people who have never seen a logging operation like this before is that every time a large tree goes down, it brings down often other small trees that it sort of knocks down on its its path down to the ground. So there's a lot of different dimensions to the kind of consumption of the forest that we see here and the way that the machine sort of sucks in the, you know, the the the trunk of the tree and then spits it back out and then rolls it back and forth and grinds off the the bark. And anyhow, you know, it's a very

Speaker3: [00:21:15] Want to add something which goes to towards what you mentioned is how did I get this idea? Yeah. Uh, in fact, I was waiting at Volvo in France because I was supposed to do a performance and they wanted some money from Volvo. And I looked at the Um, industrial magazine, you know, and I saw a photo of this machine doing that to the tree and circling the tree. And at the moment, I saw the photo, I hope I felt that it was doing that to my body. Hmm. And at that moment, I say I'm going to do a video on that subject. So it is not I am not functioning with my mind, with my intellect. I am functioning with my emotion. So when I film, I shoot a lot of different things. And for example, here with FATA Morgana, we we shot during one week and I kept on 52 minutes, which is quite long. Usually it's 10 minutes for the forest. I feel 59 hours. And I kept nine minutes, you know? But because when I am editing, I am doing everything myself because when I am editing, it is there that I am. Um, my background is my first emotion when I saw the photo. And so I am erasing all that is not fueling this emotion. And that is why the Seer is very concerned with the video because it is not a documentary. It is not an intellectual process. It is an emotional sharing of the artist sharing with the viewer.

Speaker1: [00:23:16] Mm hmm. Mm hmm. I think it's absolutely felt that was a sensation I felt in the cinema last night. I mean, one of the other things we noticed in this Trinity is that we don't see any humans. I mean, we know that they're there. We know that they're operating these machines, but we don't see them. The other thing that struck me about each of these three settings is that these are not places that you can just access easily. I mean, I've never tried, but I can't imagine that I can walk into a logging operation and pull out my camera and say, Hi, I want to shoot this. So, you know, and then the the scrap metal yard as well. I imagine that's not public access, either. So could you tell us a little bit about how you how you got in and why they let you in

Speaker3: [00:24:02] And what they want for us to to remark is that it is not a trilogy. Ok? The video each video is on its own. It is the the three video have been shown by chance, not by chance, but by choice by choice of Alison. Hmm. Ok. But it has nothing to do with the trilogy. It is just

Speaker1: [00:24:30] That gives it a different feel to it, doesn't it? Yeah. But that's an important that's an important piece.

Speaker3: [00:24:35] Yes. And so how? Well, when I uh, I am going back to the video called face to face in the largest dumping area of Europe in Germany. There I saw a photo in the press. And I decided I am going to go there. So I took the train, I rented a car and I went there and of course, I had not the permission, but the area is so large, you know that somehow I entered in a private. There was nobody and I put my camera and it is there. I saw the train and it was fantastic and so on. And the next day I got the permission. I called at 6:30. I have lived five years in Germany, so I know how the the function, you know? And I brought my bottle of alcohol with me

Speaker1: [00:25:37] To make friends and to get

Speaker3: [00:25:38] Plug and to get that nugget. But also what is very important is for this shooting. I had a handheld camera the size of my hand, so I had no equipment, just a monopod. And so as I am of a certain age, those men, you know, also what is very important is that I am filming always in a man's world and they look at me and they think that I am retired. And why not help this retired woman to spend her time? She's a little crazy what she wants to do that, but she looks like my grandmother, so I am going to be nice to her. She's not a danger this that, you know, and it is how you know, I am using this visit card a lot, you know, and it helps me to go in in an area that nobody will. I mean, where it would be very difficult to go this that, you know? And so that's how things are going.

Speaker4: [00:26:52] Things are a little bit different, I think in Texas, because we I had tried for months to get permissions into the oil refineries and every step forward. I was hopeful. And then inevitably, once it reached a certain echelon, the refinery said, No, there's nothing we can gain from this. And so we went to the Gulf Coast with zero permissions. And the first day we were driving around trying to film and we got stopped by the police the very first day. And even though they were nice to us because we looked like nice tourists, they still would not let us in at all. And so the only way we got the images for FATA Morgana was by complete serendipitous luck. I had booked a hotel close by the Houston ship channel that seemed nice. And after this first day, we were very tired. It was very difficult. We arrived at the hotel and realized there was a refinery just across the street from it. And so Tanya, in a swift brilliance, asked from the front desk, You know, we'd really like to be on this floor facing this side, and they said, Oh, OK, whatever. And then we look out the window and voila, there's the refinery right outside of the hotel.

Speaker3: [00:28:07] I must tell you that at first they had given us rooms which were not facing yes. And they found that we were a little special, you know, asking to face the right.

Speaker1: [00:28:19] Most people probably want to face away. Exactly, exactly.

Speaker4: [00:28:23] And so Tanya, the first night made a film out of the window, and we realized that the window wasn't good enough. It was dirty and we couldn't see very well. And so again, Tanya played her charms on the management and we convince them to let us up on the roof of the hotel, which happened to be an eight story hotel. And so the film, the final film was made from the roof of this hotel at night. And so that's why the light is so golden, because all along the refineries, there are these tiny yellow lights for security until to light up the thing. And so all the smoke is is golden because of that, and it was very lucky that we were staying at that hotel.

Speaker3: [00:29:02] Mm-hmm. And what is, uh, uh, very strange is that usually, uh, I do. Uh, the length of my videos are between nine and 16 minutes, but this one is, uh, 52 minutes because it compels you to sit if you want. I am not. Or, you know, the viewer. In one second, he sees what it is about, you know, and um, because I am using for my video the same perception as for canvas. You see a canvas in, uh, seven seconds less. And uh, and after if you want to travel, you can travel, you need a life long without being bored. And so. And with my videos, it is the same in in the three seconds. You know what it is about. And if you want to see it and be there and so then, uh, people do sit and stare, some stay, some downstairs. And but this video requires to kind of nearly a kind of meditation or a slow fascination. Mm hmm.

Speaker1: [00:30:21] Mm hmm. Yeah. As it unfolds over time. Yeah. You mentioned yesterday evening that in 1968, you burned all your canvases. And I wonder if you could tell us why what happened?

Speaker3: [00:30:36] In fact, I you know, when you are a young girl, to be an artist is to be a painter. So you enter the art school, you want to be a painter. I was not allowed to enter the art school, so I taught myself. I mean, not myself. Of course, I knew a lot of artists who helped me this that, but I have no academic training. I have, of course, like Bill Viola saying each person, uh, I am meeting is the time during the meeting is a kind of teacher or mentor, you know? And so I learned like this, you know, and I began to paint this that I did shows. And then I happened. I was like 24. I happen to do minimal art. But with 24, I thought I am not going to paint one line till the end of my life, you know? And then I went to Documenta. And there I saw Christo, I saw many fantastic artists, and I understood that I could be an artist without being a painter. So it was, of course, very bad painting, you know, it was a student painting. And so I did a heap of all my paintings and drawings of that time, and I burnt everything. So I had a friend who took photos, and that is how that people get shocked. But for me, it describes very well my my way of acting. In fact, I have changed about every three years, the medium as soon as I began to feel I was like a craft man. Uh, I stopped because what interests me is the research. The adventure and so, um. So that is how I used so many mediums and so different styles. I am not interested in style. I am interested in finding the best way in terms of aesthetics to convey what I am searching.

Speaker1: [00:33:09] Well, I mean, it sounds like to this burning of the canvases is a fairly early performance art piece in a way too, especially if it was being filmed and, you know, the entire performance of it. So you've been, you know, producing and creating art for about 50 years and which is wonderful and inspirational. And one of the themes that I noticed in your very quick retrospective of your works last night was the theme of the Holocaust, and you did just bring it up now in terms of the the second video. Face to face where you see where you see the trains, these German trains going by and and there's the scrap metal. And so it's and there's this sort of huge claw that comes down and picks up the metal and drops these sort of metallic bodies into the train, right? And so it evokes that. But there are a number of other places, I think, in your in your work where there's that, that haunting going on. Maybe this is too much of a reach, but let me ask you this do you find a correlation between the kind of environmentally precarious and damaged times that we're currently living in, what many people are now calling the Anthropocene right this age of man, that's been so difficult for Earth's systems? Do you find any analogy between this environmental time and the crisis of the Holocaust, or is that too simple? I don't know. It's just curious.

Speaker3: [00:34:49] I was thinking about it this morning, you know, pacing through rice. Mm hmm. And I was thinking all those killed golden boys and girls. What can they think about is very Catholic to think about the environment. So you are safe with all your equipment, with the very rich university, a lot of money spending a lot of comfort without thinking about anything. And there is not even one graffiti that reminds you that there are other people who don't live so rich and so easily. So I am sorry to say what I said really, this environmental interests, sudden interest. It looks like, you know, the the Catholic. We are making charity in the Catholic Church, you know? And well, that is a cynical standpoint which went through my mind. But of course, you know, we there are there is a Rwanda. There are many, many people dying. There is a hunger crisis in in Africa. Why don't those golden boys and girls think about it? And, uh, um uh, put pressure to the government to send the food they throw like this and so on? You know, so I don't think I think it is very interesting this this uh, because especially the the the climate going hotter and warmer, and it is some I mean, there will be a disaster soon, a real disaster. A lot of land is going to disappear. A lot of people are going to die in the next 50 years because of this warming. Mm hmm. Now, uh. We are talking about the planet as if it was the primitive planet of our ancestors in prehistoric time. In fact, all the landscape of the planet is the is constructed landscape. It is not nature. It is constructed by by human beings. You know, for the cattle, for these for for growing wheat and even the gardens. And even here, there are many trees that don't belong to this landscape, even the middle of

Speaker4: [00:37:50] The

Speaker3: [00:37:50] Meadow, the meadow. Hmm. Mm hmm. What has to be there? Everything is superficial, everything. But somehow life is so strong that even trees from somewhere else they grew and they say, I decide to live in spite of, you know, in spite of the migration of of the trees of the plants of and suddenly we don't want migration of human beings. You know, we want migration only. Monsanto doesn't want migration of the plans. Good point that,

Speaker1: [00:38:31] Yes, really, really prescient

Speaker3: [00:38:33] There, especially as you were talking about the wind yesterday. You know, the wind is carrying so many weeds with it and the whole universe is made so that life is continuing. And I agree with you that, for example, in France now there there are no I am living in the countryside. There was no wasp. No disobey bees, no bees. Uh, no freeze, uh, fly fleece flies and no, uh, mosquitoes this summer. Normally, I mean, at the countryside, you have all this, you know, when it is. So there is so much manure, I mean artificial manure that it is killing all those, uh, animals. Mm hmm.

Speaker1: [00:39:32] Mm hmm. And engineered, I'm sure.

Speaker3: [00:39:34] But uh, if I don't want, you know, the Holocaust is, uh, for me, the Holocaust is the industrialization of of killing, you know, uh, putting a system. To, uh, so that killing costless. Mm hmm. So, uh, then. I think the death of Of the planet is not for that, it is a side effect of this capitalist world. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And so we cannot compare it, you know? Mm hmm. Mm hmm. In a way. Mm hmm. But in terms of killing, we can compare. And I am interested because, you know, I am speaking of the Holocaust, but you have to think that in Europe, there were 38 million dead people in World War. Second, there is not a family in Europe where there was not one dead person. Yeah. So it is our culture.

Speaker1: [00:40:47] Mm hmm. Yeah. Well, it's important to remember.

Speaker4: [00:40:49] I think for me also, it's and I agree with you completely. It's difficult to compare the two because they're they're both systems, but they're different kinds of systems. But one similarity for me, too, is this tendency for us to know that something is happening. But still the majority of of us turn a blind eye or not do anything to stop it. And so it's this idea of a system that's even though caused by different things that just continues. And we know it's there and it's causing this damage, but we continue to let it keep going until it's too late. Mm hmm. Yeah.

Speaker1: [00:41:24] Yeah, that turning a blind eye is something that definitely resonates between the two. Mm hmm. So Alison, and your curatorial vision and thinking about these works is the kind of larger rubric of environment or Anthropocene or whatever category you want to sort of cast on it. Is that part of your process, too?

Speaker4: [00:41:46] Yeah, it's definitely something I was interested in when I saw Tanya's work, and I thought it would be really great to show this. I had been doing some readings on the Anthropocene and I had seen, and it's definitely a growing subject in the art world right now. And there are many different kinds of approaches to this field and the subject within the art world. And for me, something that struck me about Tanya's work was that rather than being a sort of documentary or like data or information based work, it's a work that functions through the emotions and through a sort of sensory based, emotions based appeal to the viewer. And I think that that's something that's incredibly strong in this conversation because we can be presented with all the data in the world that tells us that these things are happening, how many pounds of metal and how many trees that die and how much smoke is in the air. But when you stand in front of these works and you get immersed into these spaces that you normally don't have access to, you normally don't see trees dying and this close up of the refineries. And when you stand in front of it, you find yourself part of the conversation in a physical, sensory, emotional way. And I think that is exactly what artists can really add to this conversation. It's not about data, it's not about information. It's about appealing to people, everyday people, the general public and making them understand on a bodily emotional level that they are part of this conversation, that it does affect them and we're all in this. So I think that for me was the main impetus for putting on this show.

Speaker1: [00:43:33] Yeah, that kind of visceral effect. Yeah, it's really I mean, I I agree with you 100 percent. That's one of the incredibly important things that the arts can bring to this conversation, right? Is that that true affective piece, it's almost impossible to get through, you know, quantitative accounts or, you know, stacking data upon data, upon data because we've been getting that for years now and somehow it's still not quite clicking for a lot of people. So. I'm really glad you're doing that work,

Speaker2: [00:44:05] So I'll just jump in here, I've been listening very appreciatively to this conversation. I love every day industrial ogres. The show is really moving and powerful, but maybe to pick up on this last point, I'm interested to hear hear both of you talk a little bit more about the arts and the environment today. And Tanya, also, because the arts and the environment, the role of art in in addressing these challenges. And I was thinking back to the 1970s, which is a time when you were very active. And you know, there was a conceptual artist in Germany named Joseph Boys,

Speaker3: [00:44:43] Who I met him. I.

Speaker2: [00:44:45] Oh, OK, well, let's hear your boys stories. But but you know, one of the things that was interesting about a very complex figure also had his own connection to the Second World War. But, you know, he was also a key figure in the founding of Germany's Green Party, which went on to, you know, be a major political force in that country as well as, you know, some of his actions, like the famous 7000 Oaks action that was really, in some ways, what you were talking about. Listen to this capacity to involve people in a collaborative process and to create experiential engagements is something that art can do, while at the same time and taking what you said yesterday very seriously, Tony, you don't have to have a message. It doesn't have to be. This is my message. Recycle exclamation point doesn't have to be, you know, I mean, there's nothing wrong with it, but that may be not what the arts are there for. So I don't know. I just was curious to hear both. Maybe your thoughts about the future, but also your thoughts about the past and the role that arts have had in these at these crucial environmental junctures and challenges that we faced.

Speaker3: [00:45:48] I have been very much influenced by Bertolt Brecht and in one of his writings, the ten reasons to say the truth. He's saying he's speaking about a painter, and he said, What is the use of painting flowers when the the boat is sinking? And for me, there is a responsibility of the artist to so to to to do well. I don't like to I mean, to be with with this time and to speak about serious thing. I mean, at first I began to do what was called meditation rooms, but the project was to add one room in the standard housing project. And this room, as the Virginia Woolf was saying, a room for. Uh, yes, of one's own. It was a room where there was nothing. It was not even a desk. It was a room to sink. And this is a unfortunately, last night it was like speed dating, you know? And uh, there was also I did some installation where you just to sit in the countryside or in the end and admire the landscape. A place where you can sit alone and be one with the Earth. And from the beginning, I have always dealt with the longings. Of, uh, human being. But the longings of a child, the longings before earning money.

Speaker3: [00:47:48] And everything gets spoiled, I mean, as an individual, when the money problem is beginning. And so as an artist, I am I am staying there, you know, just before the money problems are going to recover all aspiration of the child of a just world, a beautiful world, beautiful the of the paradise. And because we are going out of the paradise and when we go out of the paradise made by the family, then we discover that it is even the hell we thought about was not enough. Mm hmm. And that is exactly what is happening with ecology. You know, we discover the things we had not thought about or only a few individuals, even in the 70s. You know, I was I had read Dumont, who was explaining that we should stop eating meat because it required seven times the space as if we eat, uh, wheat and so on, you know, so it was, but it was for very few people, you know, it was worse. What is interesting now is that it is general, right? It spreads, you know? And I think the role of an artist is to share this. This is how I see the world, but still there is hope, not that, you know, if we do things. Mm hmm.

Speaker4: [00:49:40] Yeah. And I think at least thinking in terms of the history of art in this like long engagement that artists have had in the 20th century with the environment, there have been many different iterations of that. So there's the artists in the 70s who goes out to the middle of nowhere and draws a line and there's a photograph that records it. But nobody sees the line, really. And that's sort of a private action in the landscape. And then the other extreme is the sort of spectacular bringing ice blocks from the Antarctic. But that sort of spectacular presentation, while it's very compelling and uninspiring, oftentimes, I think is counterproductive in this whole conversation because it takes a large boat and lots of gasoline to bring that down from the Arctic. So I think there's this balance that needs to be made that I think Tanya does very well, which is visible, rising, making visible to the general public these issues while still working within a sort of conscientious way. And for me, that's the important balance to make to really make work for a general public. That's not a sort of private action that's that makes visible these things and works conscientiously and through these emotional engagements. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:50:56] And for me, ecology, as I was telling you yesterday, I think ecology is not, um, reductive, you know, linked only to the Earth's ecology. For me, the world ecology is ecology of sort of, you know, it is. It is a new way of being a citizen of the world. That is for me, this word ecologist that so that is my my work belong to that kind of. New World.

Speaker2: [00:51:31] And it's about, you know, emphasizing it sounds to me like the relations that we have that often or creating ways for us to experience our relatedness that otherwise are invisible. But I think the thing about, you know, a lot of the energy infrastructure or the logging we've been talking about is they're not just passively invisible, they're being made invisible constantly so that we can live in in the Golden World. You were talking about Tanya Eve of, you know, a remote and cultured little garden paradise, not really realizing the machines that make that possible. The whole apparatus of it, which in Houston's case is is very near. As you know, it's not too far away from where we're sitting right now is the largest complex of fossil fuel infrastructure and petrochemicals, probably anywhere in the world or close to it anyway. And for the communities that live there, that's a real that's a real burden that they that they care so that rice can have a perfectly manicured arboretum that we live in.

Speaker3: [00:52:34] And um, for me, the model, I mean, in the historical model, you know, is metropolis within metropolis, right? I think it condense. All that we are living now. And really, I have always in mind this this film is one of one of the film that I consider really should be shown every day to the to the student, you know, because it is what we experience. In fact, it is exactly what you describe just now.

Speaker2: [00:53:16] So what was Joseph Boys like? What was your safe boys like? I'm your boys, they are German boys stories.

Speaker3: [00:53:25] Oh yeah. No, Sir James, I know because I was 17. Oh wow. And and. I was living in Dusseldorf and it was a very small city. You know, there was one cafe where all the artists were meeting and I was going in that cafe instead in going in the other cafe where it was more like engineer meeting. And so. And I was very much influenced by boys, not as an artist, but, uh, more as a teacher. Mm-hmm. And when I became a teacher, I had the same uh, I was, uh, there was no numerous clauses in my class and uh, I didn't choose students who were following one trend of sort. So I was very much influenced by him. But when I was 17, his art was not interesting for me because I was too young, you know, and I considered he was very old, though he was 30, you know? But when you are 17, you know, that's great.

Speaker2: [00:54:37] So he didn't inspire you to want to live in a cage with a coyote or anything? I know.

Speaker3: [00:54:42] And you know, later on, you know, I was I had a dubious attitude towards Boyce, who was in the. Army of Hitler? Yeah, no. And it was very ambiguous situation, and fortunately, he met those in Sora who saved him. And so but even then, he has an ambiguous attitude, you know?

Speaker2: [00:55:16] Well, very much so. Yeah, I'm going to pass it back to him here.

Speaker1: [00:55:20] Well, I think I just want to say thank you to to you both. And that I hope you both continue the good work that you're doing, both in doing curatorial work and in in making the work too. So we're looking forward to your next projects, your many next projects.

Speaker2: [00:55:37] But be sure to be sure to mention where the galleries. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker4: [00:55:42] Yeah, the show is at the the Visual Arts Center on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin, and it's right across from the stadium. So that's a good location point.

Speaker1: [00:55:52] And it'll be up until until December 10th. Ok, yeah, so good. So everyone has their orders to open every day.

Speaker4: [00:56:00] Yes. Yeah, every day of the week. And I think also on Saturdays. But people can go online to check the hours and read all the descriptions and that kind of thing.

Speaker1: [00:56:08] Ok, yeah. Great. All right. So if you're in Austin, you know where you need to be. Thank you both so much. Thank you.