Can Art Help Combat Climate Change?
Sou Fujimoto’s Envision Pavilion. Courtesy of the Shanghai Project.
The September colloquium resulted, this April, in an exhibition at the Himalayas Museum in which the project’s “Root Researchers”—including the artists Maya Lin, Qiu Anxiong, Otobong Nkanga, Gustav Metzger, Etel Adnan, Ian Cheng, and Yoko Ono; the architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Li Naihan; and the environmental scientists Thomas Hartung, Jennifer Jacquet, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—presented a group of paintings, installations, films, and performances.
The profusion of various efforts fills two floors of the museum, with a wide range of projects: Yu Hong contributed a large vertical painting of figures taking refuge on an electrical pole from rising tides below; Liam Gillick installed a parked Volkswagen, doors open; and Sophia Al-Maria offered a multimedia performance that produced a series of offerings “intended to future-proof and bless 2116;” Shanghai-based McKinsey managing partner Zhang Haimeng contributed a smartphone game that allows you to “invest” in futuristic businesses; Maya Lin supplied “What Is Missing? Empty Room,” and darkened-room installation that provides visitors with screens that glow with interactive images of extinct animals, as a memorial for the Earth’s vanishing species.
This weekend, on July 16th, Hans Ulrich Obrist will conclude the show’s run with a set of his signature “marathon” interviews, conversing with 16 of the project’s participants in succession inside the Envision Pavilion. To find out more about the thinking behind the Shanghai Project and its variegated ambitions, artnet News’s editor-in-chief Andrew Goldstein spoke to Yongwoo Lee about his vision.
How did the idea for the Shanghai Project first arise?
I have been involved with art biennales for over 20 years, and over this time I have tried to extend the notion of art exhibitions quite radically by involving socio-political subjects in ways that revolt against existing exhibition culture. In fact, I have not been doing visual-art exhibitions but have instead been trying to integrate many disciplines. So, with the Shanghai Project, I wanted to create an intersection of many different disciplines as a kind of melting pot, and to also bring different fields together in the context of China.
As you know, there is far less of an NGO movement in China compared to Western societies, and there are fewer civic activities. I thought what we need is a participatory platform where people can exchange ideas and make connections in the fields of art and culture, but also communicate with general consumers of culture and even scientific researchers. In a way, I was thinking of two different possibilities: one, that the Shanghai Project should engage with the foundations of Shanghai and its citizens; and, two, that it should be a platform where people can really try to get together.
Simply put, getting together is not that usual in China.
A roundtable discussion in the Envision Pavilion. Courtesy of the Shanghai Project.
You mean gathering people together in one place?
I don’t mean physically, but with their consciousnesses, and with their own articulation of viewpoints. I’m not saying China is a controlled society, but compared to New York—or America, generally speaking—that kind of participatory platform is lacking. So, in a way, I wanted to create a sort of social media, which is a very different concept than an exhibition. I also wanted it to play the part of a participatory NGO.
Was there any event, or any other kind of prompt, that made you feel there was a need for that kind of platform?
As a visual-art curator who has been trying to integrate different fields of research, I’ve always wanted to create a model of convergence that shows just how wide the spectrum is. As you know, there are a lot of areas of scientific research—such as in artificial intelligence, virtual realities, and even traditional Chinese medicine—that pose major questions for the visual arts today in the broader context.
I also try to mix in elements of agriculture, ecology, extinctions, and climate change, which is a very, very important issue in China today. Nothing is as important an issue in China today as sustainability, due to the increase of CO2 and greenhouse gas, and also rising water levels.
When I first heard about the risk in China, I learned the metropolitan part of Shanghai will be submerged in less than a century’s time if no action is taken. That is why it’s so important that the Shanghai Project be a platform where people can come together and discuss imminent problems, not only when it comes to Shanghai but also the other coastal giants like Hong Kong, Mumbai, Tokyo, London, New York, and Sydney. They all face the same problem. Its about extinction, really.
It’s clear that climate change is an existential crisis. Considering its vital importance, why is art the right context to engage with its challenges? How can activities in a museum or a biennial or any other art terrain usefully address these issues?
I have no intention to create sites just for art consumers—but it’s worth asking, who are the art consumers today? One person might say it’s the collectors, but I think the final consumer of art is not the collector and not even the museum audience, but the general public. Are they just a passive audience, who need to be educated by the expert? I don’t think so.
Art should be able to meet the general public where they live, and it should be able to understand the feedback of the general public, to listen to their voice. In a way, art should be a voice of the public. Otherwise, it will never be able to reach a large audience.
Going through this year’s Shanghai Project, one of the most affecting works was Exit, a 45-minute-long video installation by the poet Paul Virilio and architecture firm Diller, Scofidio + Renfro that vividly charted trends in deforestation around the world and the disappearance of native languages, using audio and data visualization to make the loss hauntingly apparent. When it comes to artists tackling serious issues, this kind of data visualization can be a very effective rhetorical method for getting an idea across. What are other ways that artists can productively tackle big real-world problems, that don’t amount to merely aestheticizing them?
Artists can do data visualization exquisitely, of course, but I believe art also has an ability to connect emotionally with civic society. As I said, the pessimistic scientific data proves that Shanghai will be sunken in less than half century. But there is no artistic data yet that has the power, or the ability, to emotionally access civic society—and this is very important, because art can create social narratives that have a healing effect.