Who is the artist?
Tomás Saraceno in conversation with Thomas Oberender
TO: At first, the «Down to Earth»-project wanted to do something that helps and gives a good example how we can change immediately our operating system and to help the planet. On a further level, for me it was a way out of the routines of institutions. Of course, I appreciate also the routines of institutions in some respect, but in this respect, I think the whole business of biennials, festivals, exhibitions is on the limit to be obscene. How can we change that? Down to Earth was the most advanced project I have done so far. On the one hand, because our sustainability project consisted of very different modules in terms of content, which all took place at the same time - the exhibition combined with spaces for workshops, concerts, performances, a repair café and installations in the garden. We always had two ambitions - to bring together very different communities, not only the art crowd, but also the experts of very different reform practices. And the other was to give an example how you can deal not only with a content of artwork, and change the operating system of the exhibition and institutions itself. In this case, I would say that your work was so fragile, in a way so decent. But the longer I think about it, it was the most radical work in the whole project.
TS: (lacht) I’m thinking many things and I will be trying to think together with you and the spider and the webs we have found… Thomas, do we want to talk a little about how the work evolved?
TO: Yes, please.
TS: When we both were visiting the space for the exhibition project, there was immediately the idea to think it together with the spider webs. The first idea was that maybe I could bring some spider webs from my studio in Rummelsburger Bucht. But then, I was asking why we don’t look and walk around the museum to find a spider web which is endemic and lives already at the Gropius Bau. I remember walking around the museum – and in one of the rooms we found a beautiful web in the corner. I think that was the beginning. The pandemic didn’t start at that time.
TO: No.
TS: We didn’t know what was coming and then finding the spider for me it was a kind of a sign. We decided that this will be the artwork that we should preserve, I think it was this beautiful spider who made these beautiful dome webs. We asked the facility manager, because the visit that we did at the museum was almost three months before the exhibition opening. The challenge was to ask all the people who take care of the building, that they would not broom it away, that we keep it in that corner and hopefully the spider will be able to survive for the opening to come. And that it would be possible to present the spider during the exhibition as something that would become a presence. Maybe I start to answer a part of your question, because many times when some human establishes a relation with a human, we try to tend to take care of them, many times because we don’t know how to take care of them, we destroy the possibility of their existence. For example, in many places where it’s written »Don’t feed animals”. The instruction in our exhibition later became the »Invertebrate Rights” - it says »Don’t bother me, maybe look at me, don’t feed me, I know how to feed myself”. Right now, many humans are unable, or they try to take care, but they produce more damage than before. In certain extent we could notice the presence of other beings within our self, microorganisms in our body for example, but other species are already also in our own institutions. We are giving space there, but without maybe the intention of doing so. I’m just saying, in the case of the spider web, that we somehow allow its presence. And then, for me is quite important – and this is what I wanted to discuss with you – what is happening later. Because the question is always the capacity of the continuations of this process. It seems that it lasts only the period of the exhibition. We started this relationship with the spider and then… We have made all attempts to continue, but then it seems we did not manage.
TO: You know the sad end of the spider story. During the last week of the show I was talking to Stephanie Rosenthal, the director of our exhibition house, and asked her to take care for the spider web after the show, as a statement. She promised to do it, because I’m as the artistic director of the whole institution not in the Gropius Bau every day. The main office is in another building. After this appointment with Stephanie I thought everything is clear and protected, but one week after the end of the show I was going to visit the spider and suddenly everything was cleaned up and the next show was started to be prepared in this space. And with this the former attitude of a clean white space was reinstalled. I don’t know who exactly was responsible for that broken promise, because we all loved the project Down to Earth, and your work in there. But at one point obviously the system decided it’s too complicated. Although the situation with the spider’s web high up in the window angle was actually very simple. I don’t know who is »the system”, but my answer is that »the system” took back the control of the old routine. It made me very sad. I had hoped that we could set small signs with these micro-gestures and your work was designed in a very friendly way to stimulate a rethink. A very charming invitation to change something. But it is very difficult to make changes, especially when they deeply interfere with habits and self-evident things. We couldn’t turn off the air conditioning either, even though we negotiated all our rental contracts accordingly. Just as we were not allowed to open any windows. And it took a huge effort to fill one of our exhibition rooms with natural, living soil. It was a huge discussion as well, based on fear, because there is a lot of money at stake. And this is the most problematic aspect, because in the end it’s not so much about our ideas and what we believe or not – it’s about contracts and the power of insurance systems and things like that.
TS: I was fascinated when you were talking about the possibility to turn off the electricity. And how serious the effects of this were. I don’t know if I can talk publicly, but I think when really deep down you start to ask the hard question, it was so beautiful, because you said: »Well, the temperature of the space is kept in a certain insurance contract, and you have to preserve this certain standard. If you don’t keep that standard of temperature – call it climate global warming, a temperature that we need to preserve on the planet – then no institutions will borrow artworks to Gropius Bau again.” That means for the lenders you have to prove a climate chart that demonstrates the constant value of 20 degrees Celsius over the course of an entire year. Without a single fluctuation. But what is the right climate during the time of global warming? And how does a museum need to adapt? Many of the questions which are those you are working on with Down to Earth.
TO: What is the right climate during the time of global warming is a very basic question.
TS: The nice thing about the spider’s spider web, we didn’t invite her to the exhibition. It’s more a way of noticing, it’s like a way of seeing the multitude of content, within our self or in the museum, which already existed. Spiders don’t have this distinction between nature that some humans have. But let’s be careful during the conversation that we do the necessary difference: we are not all treating nature in a same way as western capitalist patriarchal system. There are many other countries and many other ethnicities in the world who have established a relationship with plants and animals, which is very different.
TO: When I listen to you, I think about the text you wrote about this spider diminution project we are collaborating since some months. I appreciated the way how you avoid patronising the spider or the people who work with it in your language. It opens a space for collaboration and respect. Respecting different cultures, different traditions, different mind sets. This was the same how you treated the building, how you invited the reality of the spider to become a part of our structure and of our project.
TS: (lacht) I always think how the spider let us become part of their work. In »Invertebrate Rights” it says that spiders have lived on the planet 200, 300 million years versus the humans only 300.000 years. So there is a certain arrogance if we invite a spider in »our own home,” »in our institution.” Under the perspective of age and of this reason that we have this rhetoric all the time, I think we should get very humble and reshuffle.
TO: By the way, Tomás, when I listen to your jests, at the same time I’m looking on the window, and on the window is a spider, in my flat.
TS: (lacht) Fantastic.
TO: In earlier times I would have killed it or tried to put it out, or whatever, but not accepting it. This is also something that changed due our projects.
TS: You mention change of behaviour, and honestly that is one of the nicest things: that people notice this beauty of webs that spiders are producing. There is a lot of arachnophobias, fear of spiders and scorpions. Statistically there is only one person in the entire world per year who dies from a relation with a spider. But somehow, these phobias have been growing extremely, it takes a lot of time to deconstruct these unfounded truths in a moment we all became paranoia with some fake news. For example, one project that we are doing, is to look in some countries with malaria more carefully about the homes who are inhabited with humans and spiders and spider webs. Our approach to mitigate malaria was »Let’s try to observe carefully that all the homes.” There is certain scientific paper, that explains that the homes who really have had spiders web, the degrees of malaria have lowered. These natural nets allowing your home to become a nest of the ecology, the ecosystem that somehow brings a certain equilibrium towards this illness.
TO: I guess you relaxed in your private home regarding the presence of spiders.
TS: Yes, of course (lacht), absolutely.
TO: If you see your own home as a kind of ecosystem, it stands to reason that it is constantly changing. Be it through our impact, all that we secrete, destroy or what is changed by other species in the dwelling. Many of your artworks are closely connected to movement, change and have a strong connection to time. Some of your installations create an ongoing process of interactions between different elements of the installation itself: Sound, video, the spider and its web, the noise and the vibration become a system of connectivity. In our installation for Down to Earth the installation was really done by the spider. You added a mirror, the manifesto, you gave the awareness to the other life forms in this artificial environment. Would you say it’s a time-based situation? Besides that, the spider is changing the web – in the end of the show it’s not the same web as it was in the beginning – what is the time aspect in this work?
TS: Yes, I think so. One is to put this animal in a larger context. A spider is an arachnid, they represent 95 per cent of all animals on the planet earth.
TO: Wow.
TS: We are merely very small. As I already mention, the arachnids in this case they live for a very long time, much longer us. The time base is also to look of the presence of animals in the possibility of survival on this planet, right? When we have noticed the web in the exhibition we started out »My Goodness!”, we think »Oh my God, what does that eat?”, people were asking, »how long do a spider live there? Will it move from that corner to another?” A lot of questions came to be. It’s like how we can cultivate this affection. Coming back to your question: I think we should not limit ourselves on only that web which was in that exhibition and in that corner. All of us should go there for another visit and try to see some other spiders that came through the door, without asking permission once again, they did not pay the ticket, they start to weave a beautiful web.
TO: I would love to invite you. Maybe it’s a bit late, but we start to reopen the hughe ICC building in Berlin in some weeks. It is the largest building in the City that was closed for ten years at least. We want to bring life back into this building. And there is probably already a lot of life there. So, there are spiders. You want to visit?
TS: (lacht) Yeah, let’s have a visit! I’m always enthusiastic.
TO: It was the most expensive building in Germany, the West’s answer to the Palace of the Republic in East Berlin. And today we stand before these legacies and feel that there is no way back to these ruinous operating systems of the past. In this context, it is fitting that you question the standards of the institutions in your work on many levels. One standard is the relation between the audience and the object, another standard is the relation between art and the institution. There is a deep relational aspect which brings the audience and the environment together. You make an intervention in the everyday processes of these institutions in a way smart and fundamental way. I would be very interested if you could describe me what a classical exhibition is for you.
TS: I like to keep referring about the work that was produced there – including who has built it, who owned that spider web that we have found and so forth. ‘Classic institution’ for me, is an institution that doesn’t know the facility managers nor who takes care of the building and especially an institution that doesn’t have a social contract with the employees because of the missing awareness about their vulnerability. When we think about the pandemic, we know which workers suffered more, and the state was pretty much absent for those who were more affected by the covid pandemic than others. Meanless to say it is that your project team at the Gropius Bau in comparison to ‘classical institutions’ entangle themselves with the people who take care of the building, because they know them: The spider survived until the opening of Down to Earth. In the classic art world, all is happening very separated, there are higher employees, the middle and the lower employees. Today we see this reflected in the limited possibilities for my own concept of work. To ask to preserve something which is not considered as something with a status of a sacralization of an ‘art piece’ as an object-based thing, it put the whole institution in crisis. And as you said, the reason is that this simple idea of preservation requires a change with the fundamental set of rules and contracts of the institution. When you asked me about a ‘classic institution’, I hope that institutions find a way of engaging themselves and trying to go deep into that understanding.
TO: Yeah, yeah.
TS: It’s obvious, the pandemic was also a zoonosis disease, which is – let’s not forget – the displacement of certain animals from their natural environment. They left their familiar environment and we extent nature. In this case we have contributed with the zoonosis by kicking out a spider living in its museum, which is natural, also for them. I think, what’s also quite fundamental to understand is the necessity to share spaces. Obviously, this pandemic was a by-product of not leaving or not recognizing the environment of certain animals. Tragically, this is what capitalism does since a long time.
TO: Thank you. It’s striking that you are answering my question with a »No, the animal is a living organism that contains also other humans in other places of responsibility and levels or places of responsibility. But only if we accept them as part of our world, with the same voice, then we can save the spider web more efficiently and of course, we change the spirit of the institution.”
TS: Absolutely.
TO: One of the results of our debates over the course of «Down to Earth» was that sustainability is very often starting with better working conditions for the employees. The exhausted, depressed and victimized employee is not a good example for changing anything, because the identification with the changes is missing, there is no space for bringing something more into the game than the function. But as you brought to the point, it’s more than simply a function, it’s about different relations. When I visited your place, it is a former factory, but factory also in a post-Warhol sense, I was really impressed: There are so many aspects of interest that are a part of your studio research, handcrafted work you do with architects and workshop worker. Is your intention to create a different kind of togetherness of people in your studio? How would you describe the world you create on your base?
TS: Thank you for this question. To give a little bit of context of the world we are talking about: There is a community, we call ourselves »Arachnophilia”, a little bit to move away from arachnophobia and to extent relationships of these kinds to the spiders. Within this diverse group, it’s something which operates not necessarily only inside the art world, but also tries to interweave different forms of knowledge, to influence and to re-narrate possible stories of how we could live together in a very basic sense. There are people from Max Planck Institute from a research group on animal behaviour, from the MIT around Markus Buehler which is more dealing with engineering and material and the personification of the web, there is Roland who is more dedicated on biotremology, entomology and animal communication, and Ally Bishop, who is an artist, but also dealing with theory, anthropology and social science. Working collaboratively with another discipline somehow really helps to change the perspective and not only treating art as a way of illustrating science. I think we are in a completely moment of rethinking the disciplinary comfort zone of each of us and trying to be open from the question to the answer that needs to be narrated. As as mall example, my colleague Markus Buehler is in charge of a department with more of 200 people. He wrote a book which is called Biomateriomics (2012) on different emergence scales at different scales. I said »Markus, I’m going to Cameroon, and I will be talking with Bolu, the spider diviner. What would you ask him that he would ask the spider that could help you in your research?” The spider answers something quite incredible. Now we are seeing that scientists had been helped by the answers in Cameroon of how the research had to be conducted (lacht). A kind of loop, things happen upside down and we try to really construct different. Another very important person for our collective is Peggy Hill, she coined that term ‘biotrimology’. We talk about these examples as what happened in Papua New Guinea when a huge tsunami was coming. A bunch of tourists were with their phones at the beach, reading the news, checking the weather. And in that moment, all the seismic sensors that certain humans have established today – as mobile phone, internet and communication – have completely failed. All the people who were at the beach, who were living nearby this area where the wave came, they didn’t sense that tsunami. But the indigenous population of the area, first nation people, were close to the behaviour of the ants. When the ants were able to sense that tsunami, the people said »Oh, the ants are going up the mountain, something is going wrong.” These humans followed the ants and when the tsunami came nobody of them died.
I was recently talking at a conference to Winserv, one of the inventors of the internet, how somehow maybe we should forget sometimes certain modes of communication and instead remember that there are many people today on earth who are sensitive about the planet change and global warming. They are very accustomed and attuned with that and that we shouldn’t lose that knowledge. Not only the extinction of animals, but also of certain types of humanity seems pretty much dangerous as well.
TO: If you get closer to the awareness that animals, indigenous people or plants have and what they can sense, this is really changing everything if you make an experience of that. This was a crucial recognition we had with Down to Earth when we invited experienced people in this field, also artists who are at the same time priests as Ciss Mansour Kanakassy from Senegal who made a healing ritual that was done in Dakar for centuries to help people.
TS: I remember that you mentioned how much we have to connect, and it makes me think of a sentence by Giorgio Agamben: »The two perceptual worlds of the fly and the spider are absolutely uncommunicating, and yet so perfectly in tune that we might say that the original score of the fly, which we can also call its original image or archetype, acts on that of the spider in such a way that the web the spider weaves can be described as ‚fly-like‘. Though the spider can in no way see the Umwelt of the fly (Uexküll affirms—and thus formulates a principle that would have some success—that ‚no animal can enter into relation with an object as such,‘ but only with its own carriers of significance), the web expresses the paradoxical coincidence of this reciprocal blindness..”[1] But somehow, what Jakob von Uexküll said about this reciprocal blindness even without being with the sense of being able to perceive: the eyeless spider weaves on an exo-scale on an exo-body, an extension of its own body or its own brain that somehow the distance between the threads and weaves as such as the fly could not see the web as well, and thus can be caught. Without knowing each other’s world of existence, they somehow move together, which is kind of nice.
TO: If you could wish something for revolutionary institutions, how would it look like?
TS: (lacht) It’s about which institution, in which country?
TO: Let’s say the Gropius Bau in Berlin.
TS: I’m very happy within the exhibition we started to answer that question: Who is the artist? Who has been invited to that exhibition? How does the spider become an artist? Are we paying that spider enough? Because it’s not only about employees. What are we doing to keep preserving the knowledge of certain humans who have a different relation with animals? And furthermore, is it well distributed? We could be very hard to ourselves to try to rethink a lot of things and then try to continue with those honest recognitions. Changes can be very small, very significant, but we can keep doing so. I would continue going back to Gropius Bau, trying to find again where the spider might be, in which generation it may have died, if they have some offspring, how they have moved within the museum, keep talking with the people and the facility manager, try to raise some funds for the people who could take care of the spider. But also if we raise enough funds that we could distribute it to humans who really have a different relationship with animals, and then try to engage in the world that we are doing with Bolu in Cameroon, with David Zeitlyn, and try to spread their form of knowledge. This is kind of an institution that stays open to preserve all the cultures and diversities.
TO: This was the beginning or the end of a wonderful manifesto (lacht). We already have a wonderful manifesto by you – the spider’s manifesto.
TS: I wish I had more collaborations with artists, institutions, curators, directors, theatres, human and non-human, how we could ask permission to the web and the spider. We could keep inviting spiders more often. That would be a good way to continue.
TO: Yeah, let’s go this way.
TS: Wonderful, thank you, Thomas.
TO: Stay healthy, all the best.
TS: Hope to see you soon.