Artists behaving badly

When artist and Arup engineer/architect Francesca Galeazzi told her fellow travellers on the 2009 Cape Farewell Disko Bay Expedition that she had just deliberately released 6kg of CO2 into the atmosphere of the Ilulissat Glacier, some were understandably shocked. Here she explains what led her to create the artwork Justifying Bad Behaviour

A&E: What led you to go on the Cape Farewell expedition in the first place?

I had been asked along because of my role in engineering and sustainability at Arup, but also because I’m a practicing artist. In the summer before the expedition I was kind of questioning my role of artist and engineer and trying to come up and think of a way where the scientist and the artist could start putting their work together. If you went to Frieze in October you’d have seen there was very little engaged work. There’s still very much the beautiful-and-useless aesthetic at work. So I was questioning that.

People are sometimes about the purpose of collaborations like the Cape Farewell Project. Do you think it’s worthwhile?

Absolutely! The debate on climate change still needs leadership at a cultural level and there are lots of people willing to listen to musicians, to the artists that they like a lot more than they listen to politicians and scientists. These people are going to spread the message in a much more powerful – sometimes much more subtle – way. I went with a sense of mission already, but I came back with a real sense of urgency. I feel like What can I do about things. We need to do something. It’s not like we can sit back and keep on living our lives like this.

Having the Greenlanders telling you that the sea isn’t freezing any more, that they can’t drive their sledges and cars over it, that their dogs might become obsolete… The whole society is under threat. We may know this, but witnessing it is very, very different.

What about the multidisciplinary aspect? You were meeting artists who work in very different forms.

It was very, very positive. And very fluid. The discussion we had was very interesting. Often it was Marcus Brigstocke who was being very funny and interesting but very pertinent to the topic, but then musicians and artists – everbody kind of plugged in to the debate – so it wasn’t a very difficult conversation. It was very wide ranging.

Any individuals you’d like to work with?

Yes, absolutely. I loved the work that Chris Wainwright did with light. Tracey Rowlege and I had common threads – she was letting the movement of the boat draw for her. And Sunand Prasad was very interesting. [Arts and Ecology will be running an interview about Sunand’s work in December 2008]. He was doing a project with helium balloons trying to visualise what the volume of a tonne of CO2 looks like. I think architects have a need to visualise concepts. We tend to take an idea and materialise it.

Tell us about Justifying Bad Behaviour.

The piece was kept secret and quiet. I didn’t tell many people what I was going to do. I just wanted a first reaction from the people I was travelling with. So there was this day when we planned a trip to one of the most beautiful glaciers that I went to see – the Ilulissat Glacier – which is producing the most enormous icebergs…

And it was important that this was a very pure place?

 Yes, very pristine. Untouched. Unspoiled. Of course. Because what we’re doing is polluting it. So we set off and took this cylinder with me. I carried it to a place where I could see landscape everywhere. Where it was beautiful. It was just wonderful. Aesthetically very charged. And I sat on my knees and I opened the valve. And the CO2 came out really violently, very, very strongly. It freezes when it comes out so you see this white gas coming out. And there was this annoying high-pitched whistle which is very, very unpleasant.

What did that feel like?

I wasn’t feeling happy at all. I did it because I wanted to do it and it was something I had planned. But I had offset it so it was fine! No, it felt really bad – and all the snow around me was blowing, and it was so powerful – but that was kind of the image that I wanted. But I also knew it was a very very tiny drop in the ocean. It took about five to ten minutes before the bottle emptied and there was then six kilograms of CO2 that had just been released. And the piece in itself is very simple. You know you’re doing something bad for the environment but you still do it. Because that’s what we all do.

And it was about justifying that?

The justification for bad behaviour is that I had been able to offset it through a carbon offsetting scheme – through a gold-standard carbon offsetting scheme. So at least I was choosing a good one. There are a lot of dodgy ones out there – or dodgier ones. But with that I wanted to throw a comment on why society is so resistant to change. Instead of embracing change, we are inventing new mechanisms to greenwash our consciences, in a way. I didn’t want to say that carbon offsetting is bad because I believe it plays a role within our strategy to tackle climate change. But not as a starting point. It can come in when we’ve done all we can to reduce carbon emissions, all we can to think about the way we use resources, recycle, we produce waste. Only then we can begin to offset our carbon emissions… but not at the start. I’m not being preachy. I am no less guilty about this than anyone. I fly to my home in Italy sometimes. But we keep on doing the same things over and over. So there was also a kind of question there.

This is art as a provocation. When you revealed it to other members on the ship, how did that go down?

I would have to say that there was a lot of scepticism, and a few people were outraged… one person wouldn’t talk to me any more, she was really upset. A few people thought it wasn’t necessary. I wonder whether you’re really upset with that piece because you are witnessing something that you do every day? I was expecting a reaction and I got it. I was expecting worse, actually.

Did you see your own work any differently because of your experiences there?

I think what has changed is that before my work wasn’t very political at all. Cape Farewell gave me the excuse to do something which throws a comment on society. I think art has a great opportunity to become more engaged with the issues society is facing. Art is a bit behind the debate – I’m talking about contemporary visual art. They seem detached from what’s going on. That is something that has changed deeply in my work.  I don’t say all art has to be political, we don’t want that, but I see very little engagement out there. Very, very, little. I think it’s a huge opportunity for art to be really engaged and to talk to people without being preachy. Much less art for the sake of art and less the pure aesthetic, instead something more engaged and aware.

Photo by the artist, 2008.