Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in conversation with Michelangelo Pistoletto and Otobong Nkanga on the need to put art back at the center through a synergic cooperation with science and technology
Territorial, structural, and climatic changes: the Anthropocene
In 1873, geologist Antonio Stoppani proposed a specific definition – still under discussion – for the geological era in which the Earth is marked by human activity, a new telluric force capable of affecting geological processes through territorial, structural, and climatic changes: the Anthropocene.
Governments and institutions from all over the world as well as scientists and researchers are taking steps to find solutions for reducing carbon emissions and the waste of natural resources. Cultural and creative industries have been asked to do the same.
In a conversation with the art curator and Director of Castello di Rivoli Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Michelangelo Pistoletto, and Otobong Nkanga discuss how to respond to the contingencies of today’s world between socially responsible behaviors and the daily struggles they face as contemporary artists seeking new languages and production practices.
An artificial second nature
Michelangelo Pistoletto: The growing human ability to create and manipulate materials and resources has led to the formation of a fake world, a sort of artificial second nature. It is an achievement for the human being, but its cost is the sacrifice of nature itself.
Otobong Nkanga: All kinds of technology demand, to a certain extent, the destruction of life forms, but humans are not different from other environmental elements. Seventy percent of our bodies consist of water and minerals we can find in our environment. We have gone further: as the population grows bigger and technology develops, we are not considering the idea of repairing or replenishing our environment.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev: I never distinguished between nature and culture. I agree with the basis of Documenta 13 in 2012, which looked at the co-evolution between humans and non-humans and the need to decenter the human and the anthropocentric from the equation to find climate justice. Therefore, from 2012 to 2022, I started to agree more with Pistoletto, who is committed to finding a balance through his concept of Terzo Paradiso. He also never takes the human away from the equation. What I noticed after 2012 is a disaster of disempowerment of people, I do not want to speak of decentering humans anymore. Technology went ahead with artificial intelli- gence and took the idea of de-anthropocentrism and turned it into disempowerment. People who are suffering and will suffer the most from climate change are the poor, the parts of the world which will become too hot to be livable and will be forced to migrate. This is why we can no longer separate social justice from climate justice.
Art does not only have an aesthetic function
MP: Art does not only have an aesthetic function. In the Twentieth century, we had the aesthetic revolution and we thought that beauty alone could change the world, also in the practical sense, but that was not the case. The economic-political systems have taken over. The reality in which human beings engage beyond art is much more imaginative than the art itself. It is a fantasy; in addition to fantasy, we use rationality. Another thing: self-centeredness. The artist works according to a concept of self-reference which does not lead to a mutual and inter-human encounter. Art must work on an inter-human level to take a central role, and not merely a decorative function. Art is a freedom we have acquired over time, but it is also a responsibility. Taking responsibility means coming face to face with the organizations of power based on economies which are in turn based on investments in oil, gas, coal, and industry. If we now cut off the economies born of these investments, we will be killing half the human race. Woe betide if we do not work for this.
A different time from the perspective of an African woman artist
ON I look at what has come out of the continent in different times from the perspective of an African artist or African woman. The hijacking of the system – which arrests the possibility of other kinds of imaginaries, existences, and ways of creating art – is forcing us back into a place of understanding that our existence and even the possibility of making any form of art is intertwined with the landscape we live in. How do we create art when the landscape keeps floating, is overheated, or is too cold? How do we continue to create something that allows us to reflect on other levels than the problems of our landscape. That is why I talk about the hijacking of the imaginaries; other ways of creating are still trying to find a way to exist and move on with the landscape which has also been destroyed or changed.
MP This artificial world has got its hands on nature and attacks it. We cannot only think of the art of ancient delight; we need to think about how problems can be solved now, in a world created by the human mind dragging us to ruin. Art must engage with science and technology because only in this way, a thread capable of mending our relationship with nature can be created. Without the intelligent intervention of science and technology, we will never return to the world artists keep talking about.
ON I think it is like a broken puzzle in which you have to find a way to put things together, but they do not come together and can never come together. We all tasted the food of new technologies; we love the lights, the screens, – but we must find a new way of living that is more symbiotic. We will not be able to get back the species that have died; we do not even have the energy or the capacity to work in the same way as people did in the Seventieth or Nineteenth centuries.
You want to create something with certain materials. Those materials are not easily available anymore. We had moments in our lives when we had access to so many materials, and we could waste as much as we wanted, doing several tests and then throwing them all away. Prices have risen, we are forced to think of accessibility and cost and rethink how we move materials from one place to another, how we exploit them, the amounts we are using, and how they can return into the Earth. Materials, like light bugs, will not be as easily accessible anymore. Still, on the other hand, different kinds of lights will eventually take over and be- come more accessible. I use this metaphor of sitting in the dark, fascinated by the glimmer of light bugs, and now sitting in my living room, fascinated by my phone and its light.
Arte Pover and Radical Art
MP What you say links up with the concept of Arte Povera. I always called it a radical art, from radicem, the Latin word for root, where a buried seed can sprout, just as materials sprout in the works of Arte Povera. Povera – Italian for poor – does not mean broken but essential, undressed of the extra. Radicality has many different meanings, such as the ability to develop new technology without forgetting that we have roots on the Earth. After all, we are just animals with computers. We must acknowledge the existence of this root, which can bind homo sapiens and homo techno, our two natures as if they were our two legs on which we must learn to stand.
Cryptocurrencies and NFTs
ON Cryptocurrencies and NFTs, are against preserving the environment since they are ener- gy-consuming. This is a dilemma, in the art world where we are constantly looking for new ideas, approaches, and production practices that often come with new technologies, not considering the landscape and the ecology. We are at the crossroads of many ways of working and thinking, which are considered in some cases radical. It is a struggle for many artists, even younger generations, who think, «I want to work with new technologies; I also want to consider the planet and not waste». It is a struggle to understand, as we work, where we are sustainable and can be radical and connected to the social and economic fabric. We are going through these tensions now because of all our possibilities.
Michelangelo De Lucchi’s Venere degli Stracci
CCB Ignoring in some romantic ideas the items brought by technology is somehow problematic. We should look at new ways of creating energy, such as nuclear plants using debris produced by other reactors. Progress in science and technology is not negative. It depends on the forma mentis of the people making it, whether they make it for profit and exploitation, or for improving the world’s wellbeing. It needs to be careful not to propose new forms of colonial power, colonizing bodies and minds and increasing inequalities between rich and poor people. Pistoletto’s work is marked by the idea of the mirror, which people can enter like the screens of technology, not screens of separation. All of his work somehow celebrates what is already in this world. Venere degli Stracci (1967) – a Venus turned with her back towards the viewer in front of a pile of rags – has a relationship to many issues, including recycling – and it is not like people were recycling garments back then. It was not until he started working with the Terzo Paradiso concept that the mirror began to contain the whole nature-culture issue. I do not know what connects an artist like Pistoletto to an artist like Otobong, but I am interested in what they tell us.
Radicalism and the primary entity
MP Otobong’s relationship with Penone is an example of Radicalism. Penone never depicts a tree in his work but seeks its primary entity. He puts everything in a relationship with the outside. His duality can also be found in the ‘trinamic’ formula of Terzo Paradiso. In the center is where the meeting of opposite forces always takes place. Arte Povera has no formulas, no set of rules decided by a group of people; it is made up of artists who are all different but share the common need to return to the essential, to the bottom and start from there. Arte Povera is the only artistic movement that is not linked to an ideology. Still, it will continue to be radi- cal in all future contingencies.
ON The meaning of Terzo Paradiso meets my interest. As well as the ability to think of a place where something encounters its opposite element, physical or not. What I find fascinating about Pistoletto’s work is the academy he created, much earlier than what is going on right now, and the thinking processes behind a place. That was one of the structures I looked at to understand how art cross-fertilizes different spaces. Carved to Flow was an opportunity to think about how we take something from one place, how we replace it. My idea of the negotiation between the public space, the installation, and the land is something that does not necessarily have to be tangible as a material on the ground. It is more something which enters the public space and somehow changes it or helps us rethink that space and the way we are living together. When we talk about slow food, that is not something tangible that you merely pass by and look at, but a sort of lifestyle. I want to produce something which goes beyond materiality and enters our lifestyle. I am having this struggle between what has to be tangible for people to see, proving that a certain amount of money has been spent to make it, and how to insert something in the space that will not be visible now and maybe never, but which shifts the way we behave in the landscape. One of the people who influenced my way of thinking is Jean-Luc Vilmouth. He managed to create an artwork that is a sort of fusion between a space of relaxation, a space of quiet, and a place for observation and work, which changed the fabric of that space, and the way people live and walk through it. This is the kind of struggle I want to explore in Bra.
The Trinamic formula
MP My project for Cuneo will synthesize my previous work with the trinamic formula, a new direc- tion and to bring together the opposing forces of the outer circles (peace vs. war) to create something harmonious in the center. My desire is to no longer have peace after war. If war did not exist, peace would not make sense. We must think of a preventive peace. In Terzo Paradiso, the contrasting elements must always come together, creating an explosion or an aspect of harmony from which a new human generation can rise. The symbol made in Cuneo, in front of a place dedicated to children – the future of our society – is key for them to learn to manage opposites through creating. The sculpture will be made of 122 drawings created by children of the local community.
CCB Pistoletto’s work has a kind of operative function. Children will have the opportunity to go there, and they will be able to access their interests. The symbol will teach them how to deal trinamically with life. It seems that the problem Otobong brings up is not there because the relation between the work and the environment is in the function of the formula.
Connecting artworks to the ground, the sky, and the stars
ON The constellations in my work are different entities intertwined and interconnected, just like in our universe. An installation is made of all the things which make it exist within the space: atoms, protons, etc. I am not only interested in formulas or algorithms but also in finding a way to connect the artwork to the ground, the sky, and the stars, creating multiple layers which allow something to become the form and exist, sometimes amplifying or multiplying it. I would like to thank Pistoletto for what he has done for me with his inspirational work.
MP I did not invent these formulas. I just happened to find them. They are steps that follow one another. There is always a balance between steps; the balance lies in movement, in the capa- bility of changing steps.
Michelangelo Pistoletto
A leading figure associated with the Italian Art Povera movement, Michelangelo Pistoletto is an influential art theorist, painter, and conceptual artist, known for his performances, mirror paintings and conceptual sculpture.
Otobong Nkanga
Working across performance, sculpture, drawing, painting, textiles, photography and installation, Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice considers the relationship between humankind and land and its resources.
Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
Curator, museum director, and author of numerous essays, catalogs, and books on contemporary art history. She is currently director of the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art and the Francesco Federico Cerruti Foundation in Rivoli-Turin, as well as a Visiting Professor at the University of Basel from 2022.
