Michael Livermore 0:11
Welcome to the Free Range Podcast. I’m your host, Mike Livermore. Today’s episode is sponsored by the Program on Law, Communities, and the Environment at the University of Virginia School of Law. With me today is Jenny Kendler, an artist and activist whose work focuses on climate change and biodiversity loss. She is the artist in residence with the Natural Resources Defense Council and her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at museums, biennials, public spaces, and natural areas. Hi, Jenny. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Jenny Kendler 0:43
Hi, Mike, it’s a pleasure to be with you.
Michael Livermore 0:46
So I thought we might begin by discussing some of some of your works over the past few years, has just like so much really rich and fascinating art that you’ve created. And of course, a podcast is a bit of a tricky medium for art, but we’ll include links in the description so that listeners can get a visual sense, as well. Maybe one that, you know, we could just kind of get started with is Amber Archive, which is something that a work that is ongoing, and I still still available to be seen. Maybe you could just describe for us a little bit kind of what we’re what we’re seeing here. And we could go from there.
Jenny Kendler 1:30
Sure. So the Amber Archive is, as you say, it’s an ongoing series of works that are being created. And essentially, I arrived at the idea by thinking about how, unfortunately, as we all know that so many species are currently under threat because of all sorts of human activities. So whether this be anthropogenicly driven climate change, habitat loss, you know, oil and gas expansion. And there’s these numbers that say that we might be on track to lose 50% of species on the planet by 2100. And so in this sort of worst case scenario, which, you know, hopefully, we will avert, but in this worst case scenario, you can imagine some kind of far future where we might be interested in undoing the harm that we’ve done. And they actually exist in the scientific community, quite a number of efforts to preserve the DNA of these threatened species, whether they be you know, crustaceans, corals, birds, vegetal plants. So they, they preserve the DNA, and it’s this very high tech sort of Initiative, where, you know, genetic samples are kept at Deep Freeze temperatures, which is very energy intensive. And, of course, it’s also, you know, sensitive to any kind of disruption in the power grid. So I wanted to imagine a sort of ancient and more analog way that we have to preserve DNA, and which, you know, this is embedded in the popular imagination, this idea that we can use tree resin, or essentially Amber, or in this case, proto Amber, to preserve genetic specimens. And so, I essentially made, like I say, proto Amber, or pre Amber, or, you know, what is in the process of becoming Amber 1000s of years from now, I’m in my home studio, and embedded inside of it fragments of biological material that we’re all ethically obtained. Some with some of the health of help of biologists from a variety of threatened species. So it’s, you know, scale wing leaf seed bone, from countless different creatures, with the idea that this both provide some sort of potentially viable archive of genetic material for some far future in which it was both feasible and ethical to bring back these creatures because I wish I could actually have a whole conversation on why I don’t think that what people called de extinction is an ethical move at this moment. But it also creates this beautiful, haunting visual experience of what it is that we stand to lose in the midst of the Sixth Extinction.
Michael Livermore 4:15
Yeah, it’s it really is, as you said, it’s very, it is very haunting. And it’s, it’s such an interesting relationship to time that the piece kind of draws out in the, in the, in the viewer writes is, is a, it’s an archive of a moment in time like now and species that, you know, what a, of course, calls to mind is this future perspective of looking back at now, you know, we’re now is is deep time now is deep history, that perspective and to say, you know, that I mean, there’s just so much going on, it’s kind of saying, Look there, we will regret this, that we’re making decisions now that from that future perspective, we will Say, we will regret we will think that we made a, there was a terrible loss. And this is maybe even a loss that we might seek to undo. But of course, as you note with the, with respect to the extinction, there’s always something irretrievable in, in that loss. And of course, it also puts us in mind of, of fossils. And he mentioned, you know, the popular culture, kind of Jurassic Park idea. But, of course, we have fossils, we have lots of remains of other versions of the planet that have existed prior prior to to us. And so, so yes, it’s, so all of that, as you said, that seemed to be in mind when you when you conceived of the piece, and then and then you kind of executed it from there. Yeah, I
Jenny Kendler 5:51
mean, I appreciate that you bring up deep time, that’s actually something that often is a feature of my work. So I’m really interested in proposing, you know, work that might be very explicitly contemporary, and that it relates to the political moment, as we are in now, with some sense of urgency. But oftentimes, is also considering the much grander sweep of time and wanting us to remember that, in terms of geologic time, this moment that we live in is actually quite brief. So I have, you know, work that thinks about ancient history that proposes something far into the future. Right. And as you mentioned, what I hope that it does in the mind of the viewer is is, is help us to imagine how we might feel looking back on this moment when we still have time to make some changes. And also, you mentioned you mentioned Jurassic Park, which some people do bring up with this project, I have to tell you that actually, that was not in fact, my inspiration for the peace. I honestly don’t even know that I’ve seen the movie, despite being I guess, a kid of that generation. But certainly what I was looking at was all of this, you know, great variety of scientific research that has gone on around Amber and these sort of extraordinary finds such as you know, when someone in you know, fairly recent history is found a dinosaur feather embedded and amber or other types of species that provide this record of deep time in like a much more high resolution and all census then you can get from the traditional fossil record.
Michael Livermore 7:24
Yeah, yeah. Um, ya know, it’s funny, that Jurassic Park thing, it’s just, you know, some of these these cultural touchstones, they just they can become overwhelming. in their, in their influence. The pieces are so beautiful, right? They’re they’re aesthetically pleasing. You know, the, the different kinds of plant animal material and capsulated in this kind of beautiful, amber colored? I mean, it’s, I guess it’s Amber, or proto Amber. And when you were when you were working on this project, and kind of executing it, how much of what’s the balance, I guess, in your mind? Or what are you thinking about, like, at the level of making the peace in terms of the the aesthetics and what it’s ultimately going to look like? Because obviously, it’s very, very conceptual as well, and how do you balance that kind of the aesthetic demands in the process of creation with the, with the conceptual element that you’re trying to get across?
Jenny Kendler 8:24
Yeah, that’s a great question. And certainly, for me, you know, other artists approach this and in different ways, but for me, I like to say that, like, art does not need to be ugly, in order to look intelligent or intellectually engaged, or to show that it has a conceptual point of view, it is actually, in my practice, extremely important to engage with aesthetics, both because that is where a lot of the pleasure of the making comes from. For myself, you know, and I have a deep and engaged history with aesthetics and with with art history that I want to be in dialogue with. But I also think that, you know, it’s, it’s a gateway for people, right? And so because my work oftentimes has all of these layers in it, you know, I’m maybe referencing specific scientific white papers, I might be, you know, thinking about can you know, art history or theory, but I also am really interested in having like a wide open gateway for anyone to feel like they have a point of entry. And I oftentimes think that aesthetics can be that gateway.
Michael Livermore 9:34
Yeah, it’s really interesting. So just maybe to move on to another piece, which I found super fascinating also appears to be ongoing as well, is the underground library. So again, maybe you could just explain a little bit about about what’s going on with that with that project.
Jenny Kendler 9:54
Yeah, so the underground library came out of a collection of books that I made over the course of about a year, which the idea is to create essentially a library composed primarily of discards and unread books that encompasses the history of nonfiction works on climate change. So this is everything from Bill McKibben earliest book Donella Meadows limits to growth, you know, in the 70s, and early 80s, goes through the 90s, where we see the books all having the words global warming, and conflating it wit h, you know, the threat of nuclear winter, or the, you know, hole in the ozone. And we sort of see history of how the movement around climate changes up until the contemporary moment, you know, I have books in there everywhere from the sunrise movement, and Naomi Klein’s recent books. And so what I was really interested in doing is both like giving a historical survey of where, you know, we’ve, we’ve looked for information on on climate, and also thinking about how all of these authors who are sort of pouring their life’s work into this, whether they be you know, cultural theorists, writers, scientists, activists,
Michael Livermore 11:13
there’s even some lawyers I saw there’s a climate change law book is it is amongst the books that you collected? Absolutely. There’s
Jenny Kendler 11:19
very, you know, there’s technical manuals on specific areas of law or, you know, of global politics. But mostly, what I was interested in sort of saying about this is that many of these books like quite literally went on read. So not only do we sort of say, like, as a, you know, as a society, we didn’t heed the message. But that actually, like many of these books were discarded from libraries with, you know, their their old school, library cards unstamped. And so the, you know, the, my interest here is twofold, which is that I’m sort of thinking about how do I both like Mark and honor this unread history, and maybe memorialize these books, where the books have already themselves kind of become graves for these unread words. And also try to think about proposing some remediation, essentially, in this case. And so the the work is called underground library. And I’ll get back to that, though, to why in a minute. But in order to create the works, what I do essentially, is burn the books. And that’s what you’re seeing in these images is these beautiful, delicately charred Black Books where, you know, in some cases, you can still read the ink on the page in this contrast between like a shinier and less shiny area, which I think is really lovely. But this is not a traditional form of burning, I’m doing what’s called biochar, which is a process that’s used in agriculture or in other fields, to take essentially material that has carbon in it. And through the process of parallelisation, which is a low or no oxygen form of burning, actually turn that into this extremely stable form of carbon, which can then be sequestered in the earth, you know, eg taken out of the carbon cycle. So what I’m doing with these books is because they themselves are made out of, of course, trees, which we know, you know, if a tree biodegrades in the forest, does it make an impact on climate change? Yeah, in fact, it does, right. So even though these are natural parts of the carbon cycle, you know, and would would have been there despite any human interference, you know, anytime that biological material degrades, and releases carbon into the atmosphere, that’s actually could in theory be increasing. You know, the, the overburden of of greenhouse gases, however, you can take that material out of the carbon cycle by doing something called sequestration. And so in this case, that’s what I’m doing with these, with these books is at the conclusion of each exhibition, and they’ve been exhibited a number of times at different museums or venues, we find a spot where they then become buried at the end of the exhibition. And that’s sort of the arc of the project. So it’s not just the books being displayed. It’s not just the list of the titles, which I think you know, oftentimes are evocative, but it’s this act of burying them. And then again, with his deep time perspective, you know, many 1000s of years that carbon will still have been removed from the carbon cycle.
Michael Livermore 14:38
Yeah, it’s such a it’s such a it’s a it’s a hopeful project. It’s a sad project. I mean, the the idea of a book sitting in the library for you know, who knows how long without a single person checking it out as someone who’s written a couple of books. That’s just like the saddest thing that I can that I can’t imagine, and especially, of course, in the context that you’re describing of, you know, folks, you know, these are very important messages very important scientific or political messages about the, about climate change and what we can do about it. And so, so there is something very sad about about the state of these books in, as you said, just kind of graveyards of ideas sitting in the library, but then again, something helpful of resuscitating them getting the ideas out into public circulation, at least in in their higher points, the titles and the main ideas. And then yeah, this idea of, of, in a sense, heating the message out of these books, if only in a in a in a in a small way. I guess any individual act is going to be small in the context of climate change, with this idea that there’s going to there will be a long term positive benefit.
Jenny Kendler 15:59
Yeah, and I think, you know, there’s also something in here that, you know, there’s a sense of humor about the idea of inverting a book burning, you know, which I’d love to say, is an idea from the far past. But as you can see, you know, we continue to have books banned in the United States, and I’m not sure at the moment, those are books around climate, but certainly there was a very vigorous climate denial movement, that although mostly discredited, at this point still exists. And so the idea of sort of, like, you know, taking and recasting the idea of what a book burning might mean, as something to actually, you know, honor, memorialize and shine light on these words.
Michael Livermore 16:43
Right, ya know, and absolutely correct. The read the resonance with today’s current debates over banning books and the like, and climate discourses, you know, is absolutely part of that there are there are places politically in the states where it isn’t okay to talk about climate change, it’s not a path to getting your voice heard. And, and, you know, we’re, we’re state officials or are asked not to talk about climate change, or climate science gets censored out of official report. So, so absolutely, that’s not a that’s not far removed form from the contemporary environment. And again, as you notice that the books are really arresting, looking, there’s something kind of beautiful about them. They’re very destroyed. Right there. But they’re also, you know, you know, there’s something about the physicality of it, the the color, the deep kind of black charcoal color that they have that is quite arresting.
Jenny Kendler 17:46
Yeah, they’re destroyed, but they’re also preserved. Right?
Michael Livermore 17:49
Yeah. So another piece. I don’t know if you consider it a series are related pieces are. They’ve gotten an enormous amount of attention, are the Birds Watching and Bewilder? Both of which involve you know, these kind of natural images that that are integrated into different environments? So maybe you could just describe those a little bit? And then yeah, we could talk about those as well.
Jenny Kendler 18:18
Sure. Yeah. So the bewilder project uses butterfly and moth eye spots which are not their eyes, but are decorative camouflage marks that that the the moths or butterflies used to evade predators. So to appear more threatening or to engage in this form of camouflage that is referred to as dematic camouflage, which essentially means like a startle camouflage. The idea being that you could have a very cryptic looking butterfly that has, you know, grays and browns on the outside up against tree and then were a bird to approach, quote too closely. They might flash their wings open and struggle, the predator with these, these eyespots that make them look much larger, fiercer or different species than they actually are. So I started to think and this this piece was this piece was created a number of years ago, but I started to think about this idea of how we humans might might use de Matic camouflage and what you what happens in this piece is wherever it’s installed as there’s this pattern wallpaper that becomes this kind of, you know, horror evacuee, this overwhelming pattern of eyespot upon eyespot upon eyespot in every different color and is really both like both overwhelming but does become this like repetitive field. And then the visitors to the you know, museum or other venue are asked to pose for a portrait in front of that, where they’re both covering their body with a cloth cloth with the same print and also are invited to use temporary tattoos on their faces to actually apply these eye spots to themselves. And what I discovered at the time was that this disrupts facial recognition technology. So I was very inspired by activists who have published guides that would tell you like what types of makeup you could put on to disrupt facial recognition technology, you know, were you in a crowded situation, and we’re worried about being trapped by government surveillance. And I wanted to think about how we as human beings might be able to benefit from some sort of anonymity or camouflage online. And so it was an invitation for people to essentially take selfies or portraits of themselves, and then be able to post them anonymously by using this, you know, by biomimicry, or strategy from the natural world. And then birds watching also uses eyes but in this case, the literal eyes of birds it’s a 40 foot sculpture that exists in two and soon to be three versions that depicts 100 Eyes of birds that are all threatened or endangered by climate change their their cutouts that sort of seem to float in this this flock almost, and they’re printed on highly reflective material that’s used for road signs. So that when they are hit by light, especially in these like, you know, beautiful low light conditions, they appear to glow back at you. This was partly inspired by my coming across, you know, birds in an in a night spotting situation where, you know, if you’re passionate of birdwatcher like I am you know if you want to go and look at night, you hold a hold a light up next to your eyes. And then if you’re lucky enough to see a bird, you know, the light bounces off their retinas. And you get sort of transfixed by this, you know, look of another. And so I want to emphasize that this is this piece is not called bird watching. It’s not about us looking at them, though. It’s called birds watching as in birds watching us and really is about the gaze being returned back upon us, and the different ways that we might choose to encounter what that gaze means when we know that our species is responsible for potentially pushing these other species off planet.
Michael Livermore 22:25
How would the bird selected that you chose for that for that particular piece?
Jenny Kendler 22:30
Yeah, so in each case, they’re, they’re chosen in a different way. In the the first one, which was created for the Storm King Art Center in 2018, which is really fabulous Sculpture Park north of New York City and the Hudson Valley. That was using Audubon’s really remarkable report on climate threatened and endangered birds. So in that case, it’s all North American species. The second version was created for the Eden Project in Cornwall in the UK. And so then I worked with air ornithologist, to revise and update the list with birds from the UK and the EU. And this third version, I’m actually in process of working on right now on track was working on a little bit this morning, is for the Hayward Gallery in London, where it will be installed, essentially over the Waterloo Bridge, and hopefully visible to millions of people, which is astonishing to think about. And that I was working with the Zoological Society of London, which is really a, you know, a fabulous international conservation based not for profit, that’s one of the world’s oldest, if not the world’s oldest research Zoo. And they do very important conservation work. So they help to, you know, quite literally keep birds back from the brink of extinction. And so we focused on a number of the species there that, you know, some of them are extinct in the wild, and their populations exist only in captivity. And so we wanted to really highlight the amazing conservation work that the zoo is doing.
Michael Livermore 24:00
Yeah, it’s really powerful. And yeah, this idea that the kind of eyes are looking back at you, and, and yeah, that these are species that are seriously affected by, by human activities. And so when you’re when you were conceiving or even when you when you look at the piece now, I mean, obviously people are going to have different different reactions. But I can certainly imagine that kind of accusatory will gaze coming back from this, this suite of eyes that are kind of disembodied and staring back to back at you from the landscape was that part of the idea is for to kind of shock people into into a sense of responsibility or or what was what was your thinking visa vie, that that kind of that that reaction that I would imagine is at least somewhat common.
Jenny Kendler 24:54
Yeah, well, Mike. In this particular case, well, I’m always As the I’m always happy to write about my work and to share the way that I feel like the work might be interpreted. But in this particular case, I think I’m going to lean back on that old artists adage, which is that it’s really up for the viewers interpretation. Certainly, you know, one might encounter the sense of feeling accused by these birds, but it’s really my goal to allow that, that the nature of that gaze to be expansive and shifting, so that we might go through imagining this sort of accusatory stare, or a, like a gaze of castigation, but at the same time, we might be able to imagine one of communion or camaraderie or even love, so that that connection doesn’t have to be simplistic, because actually, when we are in true relationality, with other beings, the nature of that relationship can be quite complex. And I think that, you know, at least for myself, I feel a number of different emotions at the same time.
Michael Livermore 26:06
Yeah, that’s really interesting. That’s, that’s, that’s a that’s the beauty of art, right, is that there’s many, many interpretations. And that’s the goal in some sense. I mean, you could even say forgiveness, right? There’s lots of different ways that you could look at, look at look at something like that. Yeah. Just to take back for a second to with with bewilder the, the, the relationship of kind of seeing and being seeing is just really interesting there, like, on the one hand, as you mentioned, with with bewilder in the in the project, with the with the eyespots you know that that, in some sense is about not being seen, it’s about camouflage, it’s about hiding, from a kind of technological gaze, at least, you know, that’s kind of part part of the story that you were telling. And then in this other, in the other project birds watching, it’s almost, you can imagine someone feeling seen by the landscape in a way that they’re not accustomed to, to say, Wow, I feel visible before all these eyes, I’m kind of de camouflaged in a way that’s, that’s potentially kind of disruptive to, in a positive way can could lead to new ways of thinking of myself.
Jenny Kendler 27:24
Yeah, that’s a good point. I think in both of these cases, what I’m interested in is sort of troubling this other this more generic or more assumed type of the gaze, you know, as we discussed, in, you know, the history and theory of art, you know, it formerly and through the sort of like Academy in Western art, the idea was of the, you know, in this case, generally like wealthy white educated male viewer, gazing upon and sort of essentially consuming the subject of the painting. And, you know, men a famously reverses this with his painting, Olympia, where, you know, the subject in that case, then sort of gazes back out at the viewer and confronts them. And certainly in my work, what I’m interested in is like really creating some complexity around that relation. Because the real thesis of all of my work is to try to disrupt the idea of human exceptionalism. And so that that sort of primary mode of art viewing the idea of like a single, educated, white male viewer, consuming the artwork is like sort of at the heart of what I think is problematic in the way that artists self can prop up human exceptionalism. And so proposing that there are these many different modalities that we might like, be gazed upon by other different types of beings, and that the gaze might be reciprocal, that we might feel small within this, like web of relationships, I actually think that that’s tremendously important. And that sort of feeling of being sent back into the landscape really can help to sort of undo this terrible poison of human exceptionalism.
Michael Livermore 29:22
Yeah, it’s really, it’s really, really, really interesting. So so another piece is, I think, maybe slightly differently themed, but particularly interesting for folks. In my part of the world. I’m obviously talking from the University of Virginia, which is in Charlottesville, you spent part of your youth in not that far away from here in Richmond, Virginia. And the piece that I’m, you know, that I’m just thinking about right now is Studies for Bioremediation which is a series of photos series of photo collages. And, and there’s a relationship to Richmond there. So maybe just you could explain a little bit about what, what’s going on with that with those pieces?
Jenny Kendler 30:04
Yeah, well, firstly, I’m really happy to be talking with a fellow of Virginia and the, you know, beauty and character of that state is certainly lodged deep within my psyche. And I sometimes feel a little out of place here in the Midwest, where it is flat as a pancake thanks to all of those 10s of 1000s of years of being scrubbed by glaciers, so I miss my forested hills, for sure. But so the that piece, you’re talking about the studies for bioremediation, and then it’s apparent that a call that says kudzu, which of course, is a plant that we classically associated with the South despite it being what’s termed a, quote, invasive species from Asia. So that work talks about the idea of, of monuments, which, you know, I think we now have seen in every form of media thankfully being discussed the problematic nature of the way that we construct monuments in general. And then specifically, the monuments that represented southern Confederate generals, that tended to be actually, you know, put up many years after the Civil War. And we’re, in fact about sort of reinforcing Jim Crow ideals and actually directly oppressing black folks. So in my hometown, Richmond, Virginia, I remember being small child and going downtown to monument Avenue. And trying to understand why these statues of the people that I had, you know, thankfully learned enough about in, in social studies to realize or maybe not on the right side of history will say, why were they why were they memorialized in our city streets. And I remember also the struggle around getting Arthur ashes statute put up on on monument Boulevard. So as this conversation started to be raised in the public dialogue about what should be done with with these memorials, there was this this question that kept being raised about how do we how do we discredit these people as heroes? How do we stop the trauma of people of color having to constantly encounter these as icons that we’re lifting up in our public spaces? But also at the same time? How do we not forget that this history happened, and as a Jew, I maybe have a particular way of looking at this, you know, think about like Leb, Sal and never forget, and how important it is to actually keep history alive in each generation so that we can’t just obliterate or erase the atrocities of the past. But at the same time, we don’t want to be re traumatizing people. And so I had this idea of taking kudzu, which is this quick growing plant that, you know, when sort of inappropriately released in our beautiful southern forests can cover trees quite quickly in this like, blanket of sick leaves. I thought, Well, why don’t we plant kudzu at the base of these statues, and just let nature do the work. And I love this metaphor of bio remediation, meaning how plants in particular phytoremediation would be in that case, but plants are living living creatures of any kind can kind of help to remove toxicity from a site. And was using that as a metaphor, but also this kind of literal, again, camouflage, to try to say, like, well, we know what’s under there, but we’ve made it made it green and verdant and beautiful. Instead,
Michael Livermore 33:42
yeah, no, it’s really I mean, it’s, it’s a it’s a resting series of images and a fascinating, fascinating idea and the relationship. Yeah, with history and forgetting and nature seems just, I mean, there’s just seems like a lot going on there. Right? Because, you know, when I think of the one of the things that this this call to mind, I’ll just say as a viewer was, you know, other contexts where nature has kind of take, quote, unquote, taken over, or you have a civilization, I mean, this happens all over the Americas, where, you know, civilizations are, you know, either, you know, through kind of internal processes or in the, in the course of colonization, were suffered horrendous losses and their monuments, which were very different. Well, it’s, it’s a different kind of context. We’re talking about monuments, but there was monumental architecture in the case that was overtaken by by the natural landscape so that you know, there would be had been a huge temple important area and now it’s kind of covered in vines and kind of slowly, being reincorporated in To the, into the natural landscape. And so, so I think what’s what struck me in any case is this is this relationship between kind of nature and the power of nature and forgetting just this idea that, you know, over time, the landscape kind of removes any trace in some sense of, of human civilization and the and even injustices or great things that we create that at the end of the day, nature kind of has its way. And and there’s not much of a trace left. And I’m curious if that was also kind of on your mind, you mentioned this tension that, you know, the monuments would be there, but you know, but they’d be covered in camouflage. But eventually, when, over when nature has his way, in the end, there won’t be anything left at all.
Jenny Kendler 35:52
Yeah, I’m many years ago, I read that book, The World Without Us, And certainly even prior to that, you know, I am, I am not a misanthrope, despite the problems that I see with contemporary human society, you know, namely, because of these cultural modalities of human exceptionalism and white supremacy and late stage capitalism that we’re currently engaging in, but I don’t actually like want to see humanity disappear. But sometimes I have to tell you that in dark moments, I would have this fantasy of essentially, like, what it looks like if we were if we all work on and, you know, that idea that the you know, that the buildings would crumble and be overgrown with vines, that there is this like this, to me some hopefulness in that that there is this ability to heal on a long enough timescale. And for me, the question is really like, you know, how can we, in the contemporary moment be most responsible towards that deep future? You know, I think about this idea of seed saving, but in a cultural sense, like cultural seed saving, or on this, like larger sense of biodiversity, like how can we be sure that this diversity of whatever type, right, human human languages, maybe human cultures, all the different species, the different habitats, how can we ensure that enough of that makes it into the future that it’ll have a chance when we actually, I hope can reach a place of essentially remediating the harm that we’ve done?
Michael Livermore 37:39
Yeah, that’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s an interesting tension that’s kind of exists in the environmental movement and conservation, and even in our environmental laws is, you know, do we think of nature and this has been a theme that’s been visited on earlier episodes of the podcast and Ameris, recently, environmental writer, we talked a little bit about this is can we can we envision a place for humans in the world? You know, there seems to be a binary of either kind of a human dominated world where, you know, it’s all about people and what we do, and resources that we extract, or the kind of alternative of misanthropy, misanthropy and, you know, kind of picturing a world without people as as, as a kind of idealized state of nature. And, you know, can we come up with a vision where, you know, we play a different role. But we’re still around, is the is the question.
Jenny Kendler 38:47
Yeah, no, I think that that’s a great, that’s a great frame for discussion. Because, I mean, I certainly think that like the idealized view of, you know, perfect, harmonious nature is, in some ways, just as erroneous a view as it is to think about nature as like resources to be extracted. I think that like, again, there’s some complexity in between, that is the space that we need to inhabit. And I really think that you know, we of course, we can do much better as human beings in terms of trying to understand what our place may be, you know, that there he people spend a lot of time talking about how special we are in the animal kingdom, if they remember at all that we are animals, which of course we are. And you know how language or toolmaking or art sets us apart from the rest of the natural world. I think all of these can be debunked in certain ways. If you if you look at our fellow fell little creatures. But at the same time there is something that’s particularly wonderful about a self conscious species that can respond to its environment and make something new. So I think maybe that’s part of where, you know, again, like this conversation around a vision, and the gaze and observation can come in that, you know that there’s something special about the fact that we can, that we can look at the natural world and respond, but but I think that it’s dangerous when we when we think of this as something that elevates us above the rest of the natural world, which is why I remind people that when we look at nature and nature looks back, that we are not set apart, but of course, are deeply interdependent on this natural world, no matter what sort of technology we have, we’re nowhere close to being able to survive independently of our biodiverse planet, you know, and if Elon Musk wants to perpetuate a fantasy that he’s gonna go live on Mars, like, by all means, buddy, get in that spaceship. Well, Mars is gonna try to kill you.
Michael Livermore 41:13
I mean, that’s the thing, I occasionally I’ll have friends or you know, folks will is kind of mentioned. So the moon, the state of the environment, which is bad, you know, that we’re doing bad things to the environment. And they’ll say, Well, should we be thinking about colonizing other planets? I say, look, there is nothing that we could do to this planet that would make it as inhospitable to life as Mars. Right? So whatever you’re picturing, we’re gonna be here, it’s gonna be better here. And so we just want to make it as there is not the alternative is just a fantasy. And, yeah, it’s almost a dangerous idea, because I think people can get this, because it makes people less risk averse with what should really be accepted as where we’re going to be indefinitely.
Jenny Kendler 42:00
Correct. And this actually wraps back to that, like, sort of footnote I made about de extinction. Which is that, yes, of course, humans invent incredible technologies. And, you know, I would, it would be so so foolish of me to say that, like, could we never colonize Mars? Of course, we can. Of course, though, there, there will be, you know, assuming that we don’t set ourselves back 10,000 years by, you know, destroying our planet so fully that civilization collapses, you know, there will come a time when we could, you know, successfully colonize another planet. But exactly what you’re saying is, I think that it’s it right now, it’s too soon. And that it becomes a very dangerous idea, it props up this idea that our technology will save us, which is the same thing with this idea of de extinction, you know, that we could bring the mammoths back, or bring back the passenger pigeons? Where are we going to put them, you know, we need to, we need to, we need to start at a deeper level before we can make these kind of surface remediations. And I think that, you know, the idea that our technology is going to save us, allows people to act in really reckless ways.
Michael Livermore 43:22
Yes, and just to, you know, kind of take us back to to another piece for a second. The speaking of extinction, the work I’m thinking of as Music for Elephants, and it also this piece in particular involves involves sound, which is an important element in in several of your works. And so maybe, maybe you could just explain a little bit what this piece is, and your interest in sound as a as a kind of artistic media and as an artist, how you think of the relationship between kind of visual and audio ways of doing art.
Jenny Kendler 44:06
Yeah, I think that I mean, I’m, I’m interested in sound, probably for some of the similar reasons that I’m interested in these, like other kind of sideways approaches to visuality, which is that, you know, I really want people to have a novel encounter and to be able to be, you know, rooted in their body in a sense based way when they are encountering these works of art. And I think that, you know, in a, in an, especially visually oversaturated environment sound can be quite effective in doing that. In the case of this project music for elephants, if you look just looking at it, what you see is a 1921 Vintage player piano that’s been meticulously restored. And if you’re hearing it, what you hear is this kind of haunting and lilting score of sort of, you know, out of key notes that plays in this case is, you know, the scores on a die cut perforated play your piano roll that’s played through the pneumatic machinery of this, you know what I like to think of as like the world’s first mp3 player, right. And the the music that you’re hearing, if you want to call it music is based on data that I got from scientists that work on elephant poaching. And it essentially, is based on an algorithm that predicts what might happen in any future months, were poaching of African elephants, Loxodonta Africana to increase by only 1.5% annually. And the by I guess I’ll just say horrifying thing that I discovered is that if that happens, then elephants are extinct within 25 years. And so the, this, again, this music that’s played on the keyboard, please, a note for each month based on the amount of elephants that might die into this into this future. 25 years from now, when then at the end of the score, elephants are extinct, and the piano falls silent. And of course, then you as the viewer can’t help but notice that these sort of ghostly notes played on this like, you know, player piano are played, of course, all in an ivory keyboard, ivory being what is driving the poaching crisis in Africa.
Michael Livermore 46:45
Wow. So maybe we’ll just listen to a few seconds of that clip right now.
One of the really interesting elements to the, to the audio kind of component of this piece is that it unfolds in time, the same way that that extinction unfolds in time. Whereas with a visual, especially a static visual medium, obviously, you can have video too. But if you’re doing something that is still, you know, that’s a snapshot, right, it’s a moment in time, even if it can be evocative of other times. For example, with Amber archive, but, but the with with sound, the piece kind of has a temporal existence is that part of what attracts you to this, to this sound to integrating sound into, into into works?
Jenny Kendler 48:06
Yeah, I think certainly that idea of the way that it can help you enter into a meditative state, you know, certainly, as an artist, especially one who works oftentimes, in public settings, I’m very aware of all of the, you know, other information that’s out there that’s competing for people’s attention. But I myself find that, you know, the most potent art experiences happen when I’m able to kind of slow down and enter into, you know, in some senses an alternate way of experiencing. And so I do think that there’s something that can happen with sound work, that really can, you know, help us take a beat, and think about things in a new way.
Michael Livermore 48:53
So just imagine stepping back and thinking about the your work, you know, kind of broadly, there’s one question just just maybe, to start us off with this is, you know, when you approach a project, like music for elephants, or birds watching or any other works, that we’ve been talking about, do you come to those problems as a with a with a message to communicate? Is there a formal problem that you’re interested in addressing are there or do you come, you know, thinking about materials first and working with the material, and then you’re drawn into an idea, is there a particular way that your, your, your processes folds? And I guess I’m kind of getting at this interaction of the conceptual element, which is, you know, always very clearly present and then the kind of the physical manifestation that as an artist you bring to life?
Jenny Kendler 49:47
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that for me, there is not like a rubric by which I make my work. So it’s not like I always start with one thing and progress through a series of steps to another, I would say more that it’s sort of organically arising out of a very deeply research driven process, which is, you know, the engine of that as my unending curiosity for this, like, you know, fascinating biological world that we live on. So, but you do, I think you make a really good point, which is that there is always this like synchronization between the concept and the material that is very important to me, and certainly is not something that this does not arise by accident, that is all very, very carefully put together piece by piece. And I like to think of it almost as you know, braiding strands together. So I want the materiality of the work to have a natural relationship with the concept, you know, that there’s this sort of material poetry that’s going on. And oftentimes, there is some sort of like alchemy or transformation that’s happening. And, you know, I like to think about this idea when I was talking about wanting to make work that was accessible to anyone. But oftentimes, I’m doing that through processes that have never been done before. So that there’s this kind of, you know, it there’s, there’s a research based process, not only in the concept, but in the materiality itself. And a lot of that is what makes it fun. For me, I sometimes feel like I know that a project is right, or it’s the one that I’m going to work of work on when I feel a little. What’s the like, you know, like a free song about like, Can I can I actually accomplish this or not like, this is like, it’s not something that I am sure can be made. And so you know, even with the player piano piece that was nine months of working that out, with the Amber’s it was a couple of years, honestly, collecting specimens and trying different methods. I’m engaged in a project right now where I’m growing sculptures inside of pearl bearing oysters that, you know, took, it was something I thought about for years. And then it took me 18 months to even sort of like, figure out what’s this really possible? So, so this, this process, where I’m coming up with an idea for the piece, and then figuring out if we can actually accomplish this oftentimes, you know, many years long.
Michael Livermore 52:21
Yeah, that’s really, it’s fascinating that that pearl piece sounds really, really cool to look forward to, to seeing that. You can even even more broadly, I mean, obviously, you think a lot about the relationship of art to the, to the broader world, and how, how your art relates to these, you know, these questions of environmentalism and climate change and biodiversity loss. And, you know, I would be curious about your thoughts on a couple a couple of elements of that interaction. So one is the relationship that you have, to the broader art world, and maybe uppercase, art and world in that, and that sentence. So, you know, this is the world of museums and galleries and auctions and, you know, the stuff that’s, that’s, you know, kind of covered in the, in the newspapers, and it’s a world that’s really, really, really consumerist, in its orientation. There’s a lot of display of wealth. There’s a lot of inequality. And, and there’s a peculiarity, I think that again, I just be curious to hear your thoughts on on the relationship of politics, to that uppercase art world, where in a way, it can almost become part of the currency of exchange, it just becomes, it joins the, as one other element of the of the, of the coin of the realm, so to speak, you know, Warhol talked about business art, or, you know, you have this kind of, you know, there’s lots of ways that artists interact with with that commercial culture. And I’m curious, yeah, how do you how do you see your work or your your, you know, your, your existence as an artist, visa vie that world? Do you? Do you try to ignore it? Or escape it? Or critique it? Or? Or how do you see yourself in relationship to that world?
Jenny Kendler 54:16
Great question. I think I mean, I try not to ignore anything in the world. So I’m certainly very aware of this aspect of the art world, you know, this sort of like, Oh, are you bored with collecting Louis Vuitton bags? Try contemporary art. It’s not, it’s, you know, our world is really big place. Thankfully, it’s certainly not where I see my work having a place or relevance. You know, just like pretty much every other aspect of human culture. Capitalism got its fangs into the art world, you know, and we could it’s, you know, easy enough to trace the history of how that happened. To, you know, at this moment, at certain levels, like artists, certain types of art, and certain types of artists are traded like commodities, they have, you know, great return values in the secondary market. But that’s a really different way of working than what I’m interested in. And I think it would be a shame if people were to give up on the idea of art simply because part of it has been turned into a tool for capitalism, and they’re actually like, you know, pretty discreet parts of the art world in that, like, oftentimes, they don’t overlap at all. So what I’m really interested in is, is his culture change. And so for me, you know, I want to be able to try to use the other parts of the art world where art becomes a tool for communication with people and, you know, that’s, that’s what’s, you know, infinitely more interesting to me.
Michael Livermore 56:03
Yeah. And so, of course, that takes us to kind of another interesting area here, which is, which is the relationship of art and activism and communication and the ability of art to, to change people’s minds and to, you know, bring them bring new ideas to and so on. And I am curious about your, your thoughts about this, I mean, my, I’m kind of have to personally have two minds, where I’ve always as just a viewer, you know, I found to have like, lots of positive experiences, encountering art and leaving be changed afterwards and having different perspectives. But I’ve always been a little skeptical of the relationship of art to politics, in part, because, you know, there can be bad politics and art too. Right. There has been, you know, propaganda has been used to for really horrendous ideas, including, Well, depends on how you define art, I guess, but stuff that looks a lot like art. And so yeah, so I’m curious about how you see the role of art and politics of the role of art and communication. And, and whether you think there’s anything inherently kind of truth tracking in in art, you know, that the experience of interacting with are inherently leads you to a to a better or more clearer version of the world? Or is it? Or is it just a matter of disrupting old thoughts? And then it’s up to the viewer? In some sense to, to do with that, what, what they will? Hmm.
Jenny Kendler 57:38
So, I’m definitely a believer in this idea that people say like, everything is inherently political, or that the personal is political. You know, as someone who identifies as a, as a queer Jew, I think it would be foolish of me to ignore the sort of necessity for us to all the participants in a political realm and whatever ways we can. But I also think that you’re right, that there’s not there’s not or there shouldn’t be such a simple relationship between art and politics. I do. Occasionally, there are like, intentionally, deliberately, explicitly political parts of my work, you know, there’s been projects where there was an element of it, where we were asking people to sign a petition around a particular piece of legislation. So this is oftentimes when I’ve worked in concert with the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I’m artists and residents. You know, and sometimes there are like, specific pieces of legislation that I’m interested in changing, you know, there, there are wildlife trade laws that are very relevant to whether or not elephants will be extinct in, you know, X number of decades. I don’t, however, think, though, that art should become like a literalized tool of politics. I think that, you know, you hinted towards this that, like, is that art anymore, that it probably becomes propaganda, but it’s, you know, there’s like a, there’s a, there’s a, a sort of continuum that I see in my own work, and I don’t feel limited to have to occupy only a single part of that continuum. So, you know, I make everything from, you know, detailed and diminutive works that really are most appropriately experienced in an art museum or a gallery. But I also, you know, paint 30 foot banners that are and helped to organize, you know, blockades in downtown Chicago with extinction rebellion in the past. So I think that like for me, I don’t I don’t feel the need to choose one part of the spectrum as a person who also identifies as an artist. I think I can be explicitly political and have an activist practice. And also, you know, just you feel out what’s right for the work, you know, sometimes. Sometimes the work is really has a direct political engagement, and sometimes it doesn’t. But at least for me, it is always about culture change. And I do think that like, that’s the role of art and artists is to think about how, you know, when we have a contemporary moment that requires all of us to rise in whatever ways that we can. You know, that’s the role of artists to think about how we actually begin to change these base engines of culture, which we do in all different forms, right? You’re a writer, you have a podcast, you know, we have poets and philosophers and people making big Hollywood movies, and also, you know, artists that we’re all sort of that that’s our, that’s our role is to help people write what the next chapter in human culture will be, and to suggest that things might be able to be otherwise.
Michael Livermore 1:00:59
Yeah. Well, that’s well that’s really fantastic set of thoughts and this has been a super interesting conversation. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat with me and of course, all of the wonderful work that you do that I encourage our listeners to experience in person whenever they have an opportunity and to check out in the in the links that we’ll put in the description. So So Thanks so much for for joining me for this conversation today, Jenny.
Jenny Kendler 1:01:24
That was really my pleasure. Thank you for the fun conversation.
Michael Livermore 1:01:29
And listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, let us know. You can give us a like a rating subscribe to the podcast and follow us on social media. It’d be great to hear from you till next time
Free Range Podcast 