Vaughn Bell interview
July 3rd, 2008 John Posted in Art, Interviews |
Vaughn Bell has taken the entire idea of the man-made biosphere — that is, a closed ecological system — and brought it into the realm of the art gallery. Rather than making larger structures that humans must get inside, Bell fashions smaller versions that people can take around with them, little tiny balls of self-contained nature, like some science fiction satire. Bell gives them away for adoption — she has a “pseudo legal” adoption form and a guidebook for people who want to take on the responsibility of overseeing a tiny, self-contained world.
And she has other biospheres as well, of varying sizes with different reasons for their being, including some that hang from ceilings and allow visitors to pop their heads inside them.
Bell is currently showing at Mass MoCA in the Badlands show — this is the interview I did for an article about her work.
JM: Is there any upkeep a person has to do on these or are they pretty self-sustaining?
VB: They’re fairly self-sustaining. I get reports back from people sometimes about them. You can open them up and water them. That’s what the instructions are. You have to keep an eye on it, you can’t sit it on top of a radiator. You have to pay attention to it. If it looks like it’s drying out you can add some moisture to it or move it to a better location. The moss that’s inside, which is the main life that’s inside, it actually likes being in a little, damp space like that. It’s a hardy plant, actually.
JM: Does the moss ever try to push past the boundaries or do the boundaries define how far it will grow?
VB: The boundaries define how far the moss will go although if it was in its natural state, it would slowly spread. It does create a tiny piece of fenced off property that’s contained in this little tiny world.
JM: Some of the containers look like the eggs you get in grocery store machines, but others look like globes.
VB: I’ve used both of those, different shapes of plastic containers, and the ones that have a colored bottom and a domed top, they actually work better because they are easier to open up and take care of it and close it back up.
There’s another thing on the Web site called a portable personal biosphere that was a smaller version, really a public performance set, this little helmet that you could wear on your head. I was playing with the idea of what we really yearn for when we’re in an urban location and we feel a need — a physical and emotional necessity — to be around living things that we often don’t have in a really urban place, so this is a satire of that with this dome that you could wear over your head and it has this green horizon that was this layer of mosses right in front of your nose. You wouldn’t have to smell the exhaust fumes from the cars and everything would be muffled, so it’s a really personal piece of nature but also absurd.
Then I made these larger scale ones that I call personal home biospheres as a continuation of this idea that you could have this personal biosphere in your home, with this absurd image of this person sitting on a couch watching television but in this biosphere and that you could customize it and have this natural environment with your personal kind of environment. There were some that had moss in them, but there were also some that had tropical plants in them as well. They started off as just these singular domes, and since then — that was in 2004 that I made those pieces — I started the little pocket biospheres at the same time I did those as this idea that, especially when there’s an interaction in a gallery or an art space, I like the idea that there’s the work carries out into the public realm. The pocket biosphere is this way that the work becomes intimate.
Since then I’ve made another home biosphere that is a biosphere for two persons called “A Biosphere Built For Two” and it’s a more domestic space. The piece that’s going to be at Mass MoCA is called “Village Green” and it takes this idea of these home biospheres and extrapolates it into this New England village, so there’s this whole collection of biospheric dwellings that are for different numbers of people and some of them evoke this New England town with classic house shapes and others evoke the rolling hills and the dome of the sky, the curve of the original ones, so it’s going to be a combination of those two forms.
JM: Visually and conceptually, there’s a huge science fiction component to it.
VB: That’s in my mind in a tangential way where I feel like the kind of process that I have for coming up with these ideas is that I’m really interested in gathering different cultural references. I’m fascinated with all the various and problematic and hopeful ways that we conceive of how we relate to nature and this futuristic, dystopian vision where we’re cut off from nature or we have to build this alternate reality for ourselves, it’s one of those visions that especially manifests in this work.
JM: You think about the history of public parks in urban areas and the idea of having these islands of green, and you’re taking it to a whole other level.
VB: I’m really interested in the aspect of this work that can show that there is an absurd, humorous side to this type of relationship with nature, that it’s a little bit crazy. Maybe if we look at that we start to see other possibilities also.
JM: The portable personal biosphere makes me think about the human need for light and seasonal affective disorder and the special lights people buy. It’s a similar psychological faking out.
VB: Yeah, or this intensive care unit kind of feeling where there’s this very artificial life that somebody created, a kind of crude approximation of the original ecological system, which is also interesting to me, because you read a lot about restoration efforts and all these things where we’re trying to recreate natural systems that we’ve altered in some ways, and how complex they are, and the difficulty and impossibility of that. The human struggle and failure is also fascinating to me.
JM: Is there much of a connection for you between the city and the nature outside it?
VB: I moved here from New England, I lived in Boston for many years. I think it’s still a little bit of a field/forest thing. The difference is, Seattle’s a large metropolitan area, but when you live in the east coast megalopolis, you’re very far from landscapes that are really uncontrolled, and I think there’s really a different mentality on the west coast where people can literally drive for an hour and suddenly there is this place that’s not a farm, not a suburb. Maybe it’s more clear cut there, but relationships to the landscape are different. To me that’s still something I bring into my work and the work that I’m showing at Mass MoCA would have a different meaning and different context if I were to show it here.
JM: My impression has been that it’s a lot like Canada, where you leave a city and you’re nowhere.
VB: Exactly. It’s very strange. It gives you this strange sense that you’re at the end of the continent, you’re on the coast. In Seattle, you can go north to Vancouver and Vancouver has it even stronger, this sense. Talk about futuristic — glass towers, this dense urban, but then literally if you were to drive not long at all you’re in areas that are not dominated by humans in that kind of way at all, it’s this feeling like you’re at the end of the world.
JM: Do you generally find urban art world people clued into nature or cut off from nature?
VB: That’s a good question. It’s hard to say art world people in general — or even people in general — but I think that people have so many different mythologies that they’re operating on, or methods of looking at things, but there does seem to be — especially in contemporary art right now, because it is so topical in a really, really intense way, the environmental crisis has been going on for decades now, climate change — this ground swell of artists doing things related to nature in really diverse ways. There’s a romantic side and there’s a cynical skeptical attitude that I find in other places, and then there are other people who are really engaged with the scientific and ecological policy-based side of it.
JM: Which part do you feel closest to? The science side?
VB: Yeah. I think that the way I like to think about it, I like to research from both sides. As an undergraduate, I was doing art classes, but I was also doing my research in what’s called “nature and culture,” so basically I’d have conversations with people who are biologists studying deep sea beds and then also have a conversation with an art historian and see these two vastly different kinds of methodology looking at the landscape or nature, whatever you want to call it. The way that those two encounter each other is really fascinating to me.
JM: Do you still pay a lot of attention to science, keep up with your reading?
VB: Yeah. I’m mostly interested in the ecological and biological sciences and the like. I also really enjoy the parts that are more everyday, like plant identification and horticulture and those kinds of things that are more tactile maybe. I have peers who come from a science background. The other thing that I probably spend more time paying attention to is reading about environmental policy and all the ways that our culture uses that information. In Seattle, the things I read about are often very local. I read about the different impacts on the future health of Puget Sound, or something, and thinking about those things.
JM: How do you look at your work in relation to the environmental crisis?
VB: Some of the projects I’ve done are most specifically engaged in using an activist stance than others. I did a collaborative project thats ongoing but started last year, a group of artists mapping and walking, creating a series of performances to mark up the potential sea-level rise in Seattle. That kind of work, to me, is important. As you can see from the work that’s at Mass MoCA, I feel that’s much more ambiguous and that’s one of my fascinations, playing with meaning. I guess that’s also the reason I feel like, as an artist, addressing these things through the venues and mediums of art is really valuable, because it does allow for ambiguity and asking questions. One wouldn’t necessarily do that in more of an activist context, perhaps.
JM: People do have a relationship with plants, even if they’re not nature people — potted flowers and lawns. It’s a very controlled relationship though, so I can see the biospheres tapping into that, it’s the way most people connect, but moss isn’t really the plant of choice for most people.
VB: It’s kind of a mundane plant. I was using moss in my work before I was on the west coast, but out here there’s moss killer in the hardware stores because people are trying to get rid of it so much. But it’s a really fascinating plant because it’s amazingly resilient.
I have this ongoing fascination with things being a microcosm that, both visually and conceptually, is itself and can stand in for something larger. Moss is this miniature thing in this Japanese garden kind of way, this bonsai kind of way, in which the human made and controlled landscape of the garden becomes representative of all those larger things — the large landscape, the sacred landscape — I’m interested in those kinds of references as well.
JM: Does moss actually have any beneficial properties in nature? I plead ignorance there. It seems like there’s always something that people thinks is icky that turns out to be great.
VB: It’s like a lot of low lying plants that we think of as ground covers that aren’t very noticeable — a lot of those trap groundwater, so I know that there are certain types of moss where, if there are toxins in the rainwater or the run off, the moss will actually leech that out the same way that the wetland catches the run-off from the road and captures it. So there is an element of it that’s like a natural sponge that can soak up poisonous substances.
JM: You’re lending a beauty to a plant that many people don’t look at in an aesthetic way.
VB: It’s kind of like putting them in a frame, sort of designating it as an aesthetic object, it’s an opportunity to give something an aesthetic value.
JM: Do you think by doing that, that’s how people can even qualify aesthetic value, they need these borders to point them out?
VB: I guess that’s part of it. My other hope is that this performance aspect of the action is about valuing something that you wouldn’t necessarily have thought about valuing. I’ve done other, similar ideas of the performance, with this adoption thing going on, with other plants. I have this thing called “the Cultivation Utility Vehicle” that I take around to public art events and I have it full of so-called “land,” which are these pieces of earth that might have some kind of plants growing in them, then I have this interaction that’s about “this plant’s free to a good home” and people say “What? You’re giving away something free?” and the conversation becomes “I’m only giving it away to people who express commitment and responsibility,” so it transforms from an object that could be a commodity to something that’s a relationship. The whole adoption performance is about that, seeing something and valuing it differently.
JM: It’s not much different from what groups that give away free seedlings for peoples to plant in their yards do — creating a personal value in these plants. Some people might think this is wacky, what you, but actually —
VB: It’s not really that strange! There is this continuum between activities that get called art and don’t get called art, so to do this in this context versus the Arbor Foundation doing it in their context, and the different manner in which it’s presented, thereby giving people a meaningful relationship to trees — this is a similar thing!
JM: When people wander up and think they might like to take a little biosphere at home, do you make them in front of the person?
VB: No, I have them made already, so they’re there, and then I have this adoption form set up. I say, “They’re up for adoption but you’re going to have to be prepared to take care of it. I usually show them the adoption form and it has it laid out on the form. There’s some do’s and do nots — do pay attention to it and check to make sure it has enough moisture, don’t run over it with your car or set it on top of the oven or abandon it. Then I ask them if they’re sure if they want to adopt and if they do, we go ahead with the paperwork and they take a biosphere.
JM: Do you do a lot of design with the personal home biospheres?
VB: It’s evolving, because it’s gotten a little more complicated in terms of the exact dimensions. The ones I made for Mass MoCA, I spent quite a while working on the design of them and then working with the computer and going back and forth with the design, the material, what’s possible and not possible. How they relate to each other in the space is also part of that. I’m interested in how when there’s more than one in a space and multiple persons, it’s not just about each person interaction with the piece but each person’s interaction with everyone else who’s participating in that piece, because if you’re in this dome-filled moss with someone else’s head a foot away from you, there’s this forced intimacy that happens that is a different interaction as well.
JM: Do you have any sense how your interests and obsessions blossomed over the years and what steered you to these examinations of space and perception?
VB: The history you tell yourself about yourself is always changing, but I feel like I’ve always, for a very long time, been fascinated by this. My interest in the subject matter of my work predates the knowledge that doing it in context of art was what I was going to be doing. I was very interested in relationship to place and environmental concerns for a long time growing up. Probably the biggest slice is that my entire family are landscape architects. I feel like if you spend a lot of time becoming attuned to how places affect you and how they affect people and how people affect their surroundings early on, to me that’s an incredibly rich, ever-expanding realm of exploration. That combined with, to my mind, a feeling of urgency is part of that exploration because we have to figure out a better way of doing things.
JM: Your whole family is made of landscape architects?
VB: Both my parents are and, ironically, my brother is now a landscape architect.
JM: Is there any point that you rebelled against that?
VB: I did end up becoming an artist instead, if that’s any different.
JM: An artist who takes her family profession and messes with it a bit.
VB: There’s a way in which the creative process sometimes becomes incredibly obvious but you don’t realize it and then, suddenly, I’m making these domes full of plants or I was making these landscapes on wheels, so doing this and thinking, “I’m making sculptures, I’m making sculptures,” and then, “I’m making sculptures about landscapes,” and then just looking at them and saying, “I’m making landscapes.” It’s just that they’re human scale, they’re directly related to the body in a way that’s more obvious than doing a site plan may be. It’s also about human relationships and the scale of the human body, but these are taking that to the extreme in a really obvious way, so, yeah, it’s taking all that context and playing with it and twisting it around.
JM: Do you ever get any feedback from your family?
VB: They’re pretty entertained usually, they’re usually pretty excited.
JM: Do you ever get any ideas from their work?
VB: I get ideas from hearing about things. One of the great things that’s actually wonderful about doing the work that I do is that I feel like there’s this absolutely fabulous freedom by doing things in an art context and there’s a whole different realm of concerns. Often I am thankful and I think, “What if I had gone into a profession where there was more pragmatic concerns overriding some of these?”
There are possibilities of other ways where people are thinking of very similar things but in very different applications and context. I like hearing about the way public processes happen, about how people come to decisions about how they want to design their small town or regulate their streetscape or whatever. These are really mundane things, but to me, hearing about them is always fascinating because it always reveals some underlying belief structure or thoughts about what’s a good place, how we see ourselves in relation to other species, belief systems that are hard to come out when you look at what kind of design process a town sets up.
JM: When you’re poking around in other towns, do you pay attention to town designs, city planning?
VB: Definitely. To me, that’s another ongoing question. I love to go to places and I have this sort of this psychogeographical attitude about the space. You walk through the space and have this vastly different changing physical and emotional experiences of places, but then I also often end up applying these very positive and psychological things and thinking about what it is that doesn’t have these positive effects on people, why are there people out on the street here but there’s not any people out on the street somewhere else? What is it that makes this place appealing or not appealing? What is it that’s made this into a vital public space — or this one’s not. What is it about the way this street looks, this corner of a highway or this vacant lot, what is it revealing about the history and the attitudes of everything that’s happened here?
JM: So this is what you do on a jaunt?
VB: Exactly, yeah! One of my favorite things to do, actually whether I know the place well or not, a place where I start off and explore, maybe there’s a map involved or maybe there’s some sort of directions, but that they’re very malleable and that there’s a way of experiencing the details that may not be the most obvious ones, and then see how the things reveal themselves.
JM: So every place is a microcosm upon a microcosm upon a microcosm, it’s an ever-revealing thing.
VB: Exactly. I like to collect pictures. When I lived in South Boston, I had these pictures that I felt were so emblematic of South Boston, like the person who had taken plastic pointsettas and stuck them all along their front yard to make it look like there were flowers growing. Stuff like that is so — I don’t know, it’s hard to even describe what that means, but it can be really touching.
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