What is the power of your industrial landscapes, especially in an exhibit curated from 1985 until now?
Different artists work different ways, and my particular way is that I’m constantly pivoting from the same point of view. Each image is a reflection on our relationship to nature and to the natural elements that are there. Ultimately, all things at some point come from nature and obviously we take things and turn them into new products but the source is always nature.
If we look at the material history of any object, there are three histories, I think, to anything that comes into our lives: history of where it came from, history of when it’s with us and the history of where it goes.
With China, I’ve shown the origins of where things are made. And then in my earlier work in the 90s, I’ve been showing quarries and mines, so these are all in the first, second or third histories of anything we would engage with as consumers.
Understanding that each image comes from those ideas, then I think the work becomes very unified over the twenty some odd period of years when you understand that’s what I’m trying to do.
What interests you about material history?
Species have always had to rely on other things, whether it be herbivore, omnivore or beavers who cut down trees.
All living things interact with their enviroment around them to provide them with the essentials for their survival. So that’s not new, but what’s different, what’s changed, is with the industrial revolution, and then the discovery of oil, a combination and the internal combustion engine along with a plentiful supply of oil, has fueled the kind of scale and speed with which now we are able to extract and build and lay waste—it’s unprecedented.
So what changes is now there are 6.5 billion people trying to reach for the same materialistic, middle class lifestyle and there’ s just not enough for the world to go around. I think that is what interests me about the material world, is that we live within a finite system, and there’s only so many minerals, so many trees, so many fish that can be taken without causing damaging future effects—we’re testing the outer limits of sustainability, now a source of some of the larger problems that are facing the planet, moving it into a planetary crisis.
In your 2005 TED prize acceptance speech, you said that China “is truly a question of sustainability.” Has that question changed or evolved? What’s its nature now?
I think the question is still unfolding, I think we haven’t heard of the full down side of this kind of rapid expansion, and I think at some point within the next decade—I’m sure we’re going to start hearing the stories, whether the stories are people getting sick and dying from pollutants and bad water—or the collapse of water systems because it’s being drawn down so rapidly and with such lack of forward consideration or regulation.
It still stands to be seen what’s going to happen, but I think, as I pointed out to many of the Chinese bureaucrats while there—I did this presentation and I said China was already under stress before the West was invited in. With that many people, with that much pressure on land, with that much pressure on water, and with over 1 billion people at that time—now, it’s over 1.3 billion, but with the one child rule many say a lot are being hidden— so you have all these million and millions of people and they’ve invited the biggest consuming, belching industries into their backyards and put what was already in stress under greater stress so, at some point, things start to go wrong and we haven’t heard that yet, but I don’t suspect is far away.
It’s not a question of if; it’s a question of when—unless they can somehow avert it through massive retooling. But put it this way, they’ve already built so much and its all inefficient—there’s no central air, cars aren’t very efficient, they’re making them really cheap, they don’t have a lot of the things domestically that we demand in our cars, and they’re building a dirty coal plant every week—so there’s going to come a point when the air will be impossible to breath and the water impossible to drink and those kinds of conditions are dire.
How do you think your photographs affect the sustainability discussion?
One of the made-in-Canada issues that I feel should be on everyone’s antenna is what’s happening in Alberta on the oil sands, and I’ve worked with the Globe and Mail to bring awareness.
This is a great gift for us, this can make Canada a very desirable and a very rich country: the second largest known reserve of oil after Saudi Arabia, with a guaranteed market. For the politicians and corporations who are exploiting it, it’s nirvana, they’ve hit the jackpot. But that being said, there’s a price of being exacted for it—I’m not so naïve to think that anything or anybody can stop that development from happening. It’s going to happen, it’s happening. The only way we can hope to do it is in the most conscientious way possible.
I guess the only thing Canadians have a chance to do is to say “look, don’t hand any more leases until we figure out how to do this in a much more environmentally friendly way”, not producing as much CO2, to make sure that when these leases are handed out that they’re going to comply within a fairly rigid set of environmental conditions that will bring the land back to a usable state so the land and water isn’t depleted.
Why, in your opinion, are people so fascinated by your photos’ subject matter?
I’m an artist so I’m interested in making works that allow me to draw the viewer to the image to make them considerate. And I feel the first principle of what an artist does is to communicate; communicating something that you’re feeling, thinking. Ideas, trying to translate them and manifest them into your art work.
So first comes the idea—I want to do oil fields, refineries, ship-building—and then when I go in I try to find a way in through which I can approach the subject in such a way that it sits within the body of the work and it becomes somewhat recognizable in my way of thinking; in this larger body of work that’s been going on for decades. To me, that is the key element, that the pictures can stand alone, as well as they can co-exist side by side, complement each other and build a stronger message through the amalgamation of many of the different themes that I think the viewer can begin to appreciate. I’m bringing them into the idea.
How has China affected you and your work?
It’s certainly allowed me to bring some visual clarity to something that intellectually I knew and had heard for decades: that China is the manufacturer of the world, but there were very few images and very little that one could look at and say “this somehow represents what’s going on there.’
When I started researching it in 2000, there were scant few images that were showing China’s rise as a new industrial power. So we knew about it, we heard about it, and every once in a while you’d get a panning shot off a video camera. But it wasn’t a comprehensive body of work that began to peel back and look into China and it’s growth and it’s industrial expression as it manifests itself in that country.
So, for me, it was a way in which I could witness this new industrial revolution and be able to capture images that somehow speak to that greater force on the horizon and growing. And I think the images I took were some of the first high quality images of the industrial revolution that they’re going through, that’s come out of the country. For me, it was a chance to bear witness, because as a photographer you have to be there, in front of the subject, witnessing it first hand.
The scale of what is going on there is mind-boggling but at the same time I’m acknowledging that I’m only seeing a part of that and will never see the whole thing, it’s just too big.
But I can see where the high concentrations, the biggest areas for anything are—whole towns who just do socks, whole towns who just do findings, who towns who just do shoes—so you have these really concentrated expertise throughout the country. There are thousands of people dedicated to one type of product, so that was really interesting I think, and it really gave me a sense of the scale and complexity and how that place works, giving me a firsthand view.
What are your thoughts on the sustainability discussion or conversation right now? Are you pleased with what’s happening—even particularly in Canada?
In fact, there is a lot more that is happening in the private sector amongst individual and private corporations. And I’d say that even cities have been more pro-active in sustainability issues.
Where I find it discouraging is on the federal level, both in the United States and Canada.
The current flavor in Ottawa as well as Washington—although they’re both up for re-election—has been as little policy in that direction as possible, business as usual. And if you look at what is happening in the states, I think “drill, baby, drill” says it all. And then there’s not a lot of incentive for our guy from Alberta to do anything to slow down what’s happening in Alberta and the fact that it’s making it very hard, almost impossible, for Canada to comply and reduce its CO2 footprint as all of these new CO2 emitters are coming on stream.
It’s discouraging to see how North America, how these two very wealthy industrialized countries, are failing to do what’s right. And I think that that’s very discouraging.
And I don’t know—if a Conservative majority comes into power, I just don’t have faith that they’re going to do a lot.
They don’t seem to really hold a lot of concern or care for how we stand on an international scale, it doesn’t really seem to bother them whether or not they’re destroying culture because they don’t see the value of it and not obliging us to live up to our commitments, as in the case of Kyoto, doesn’t seem to bother them either.
They don’t have a lot of regard for how we’re being perceived out there by our neighbours who are trying to do better—Germany and France and even Britain is coming around. We have a very weak federal initiative that comes nowhere close to dealing with the problem. And if we get more Conservatives we’re just going to get more of that. Which is very very sad, because I think for anyone who is following it closesly and looking at the reality of what we’re facing, the timing of the issue, every decade is another nail in the coffin and the chance of reversing what we’re doing becomes a lot less likely. There is an edge, it’s not far away, and if McCain and Harper were both somehow able to capture power, it would be like ‘forget the brake pedal and just slam on the gas a little harder’.
On that level, it’s maddening, because there are a lot of people who really want to see change and are working hard to see it happen, but unless you change the rules for all corporations and put some value to the emitting of carbon, then you’re making some real changes instead of giving it lip service, and right now it’s all lip service up there.
How do you draw the line between being an artist and an activist? Do you draw the line?
Well, in terms of the proper definition of an activist—whatever that definition is—is that defined as someone who demonstrates in front of city hall with a blackboard? In that regard, my work points and becomes a template upon which different ideas can be discussed, a point of departure, and allows for larger discussion about our role on the planet, our impact on the planet. It’s interesting that the work can spark discussion and debate in all kinds of different directions about the world we’re creating.
Politically, there is a political element to the work, there’s a political element to any work, but it is one of the handles, I don’t see it as the only handle, I think there are many ways in which one can inflect off of the work and move into a discussion. You can have a discussion about geology and the kind of conditions that had to be there to form the minerals in the first place, you can have a discussion on our techniques of extraction, you can have a discussion on art history and predecessors to this type of work through the history of art—becomes I’m not the first nor the last—or you can enjoy it just for its formal elements, its formal qualities and how it makes you feel. Because a work of art is supposed to engage you intellectually and emotionally. The piece is actually completed by the viewer by what happens in their perception and their mind, what they’re seeing and their discussion. I find it’s better not to actually politicize the work upon entry of seeing it, leaving the narrative more open allows a discussion to ensue. So whether you’re right or left, a corporate leader or student, each one can have a reading from that and can be able to contribute to the discussion based on their knowledge of the world.
That is a healthier way to approach the issues we are dealing with as opposed to what’s happened before where it was rock throwing across the void where no one is listening on the other side. I think that kind of behavior is over and everyone has to come to the table and say ‘this affects all of us, the decisions we make will definitely affect the lives of our children and their children. If we choose to do nothing we’re relegating them to a very miserable future.’
– Taylor Burns
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