INTERVIEW WITH Flora Li Thiemann

When did you first become aware of the sustainability and ethical issues within the film industry?

It began really early for me to grapple with environmental and social issues in our world, actually, as a child. As a private person in general. Since sustainability has always been an important topic for me, and I have been working in the film industry since I was 7 years old, of course, my view on it was always sensitive.

The film industry, in particular, has an immense impact on our environmental footprint since it involves a lot of processes across all the different departments from pre-production to the on-set work, which consume a lot of resources and contribute to carbon emissions overall. In the last few years, it has become a bigger topic to find greener alternatives for production, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

I think one of the main issues, not just in the film industry but in general, is that in our society, many environmental and social issues are normalized and ignored. Someone who is buying salami in the supermarket is probably not consciously thinking about it being an animal and supporting its suffering, how the salami was produced, and the impact it has on our climate. There needs to be more educational work and communication in general about these environmental and ethical topics in the first place to create awareness and responsibility in society instead of ignorance and avoidance. Change starts in the mind and in our feeling of responsibility and the will to do what is right. We should support that in society in the first place.

CREDITS

Art Direction & Styling: BELVIS SOLER

Photography: JENS WITTWER

Starring: FLORA LI THIEMANN @ RIETZ MANAGEMENT

Make Up Artist: KARIM SATTAR

Hair Stylist: ISABEL MARIA SIMONETH

Styling Assistant: SASKIA FRY

Courtney Mattison is an American artist and marine activist working with ceramics to raise awareness about coral reefs and climate change. Using clay as her medium, Courtney Mattison creates intricate ceramic sculptures on a large scale. These pieces are informed by her background in ocean conservation science and policy. You can find Courtney’s pieces all over the world, from Indonesia to California.

What is the state of coral reefs at the moment and why do they need help? 

Coral reefs are extremely important to the health of the ocean and they’re also extremely sensitive to changes. And for that reason, with climate change and more extreme temperature changes and weather events, coral reefs are increasingly threatened. A lot of marine scientists have stated that they don’t expect coral reefs to be a functioning ecosystem by the end of this century, which is really scary.

Is this a big topic of conversation where you’re based in San Francisco?

Yeah, definitely. I think climate change in general is something that people in the coastal cities of the US are really focused on. America is famous for having sceptics about climate change, but here in San Francisco, it’s much more progressive and a lot of the people here believe in science and understand what’s going on in the world. It’s something that I hear a lot of people talk about and people are extremely mindful of their impacts on the environment and their ways of influencing corporations and governments to turn things around with climate change. 

I focus on this because climate change really is the biggest threat to coral reefs. I think there are other major threats like overfishing, commercial fishing, pollution and things like that. But climate change is what’s really devastating reefs around the world, way more quickly than anyone expected, because they are so sensitive to those temperature changes. Also, carbon dioxide dissolves into the seawater which makes it more acidic. So it’s a double whammy, dissolving them and suffocating them at the same time.

And has your art always been on coral reefs or climate change? 

It’s kind of my muse. I grew up in San Francisco and we don’t have tropical coral reefs right off the coast here, but I was always really fascinated with the sea and I started exploring tide pools and studying marine biology as a teenager.

As soon as I really dove in and became fascinated with marine life, I wanted to sculpt them. I felt like it was a way for me to connect with corals differently, and to understand the anatomy and structures of these creatures. Corals are animals, but they don’t have faces and they’re colonial and there are just so many weird aspects to marine invertebrates that I find fascinating. So to me, they seem really sculptural and it’s always been a natural way for me to celebrate and explore them. 

Was there a light bulb moment where you decided this was what you were going to do with your life? 

Yeah, I trained in marine science and art, so I was straddling these two disparate fields for most of my education. My formal education mostly focused on marine biology so I did think about becoming a marine scientist, but then I realised that if I was strictly a scientist, I would be throwing away a lot of this passion and the skills that I had developed in sculpture. I would also be throwing away my voice because scientists have to remain so neutral to collect data and publish studies.

I didn’t feel like I would have enough of an outward-facing voice to advocate for conservation. So that’s why I became an artist professionally. And now I work full time as an artist and I use that background in science to inform my work.

Can you tell me more about how your background in marine biology informs the work and how it influences what you do? 

I studied marine ecology and I focused on coral reefs. I did fieldwork in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, and I’ve been scuba diving since I was 18. So I’ve been really lucky to go around the world to different tropical marine regions and other places and to see some of the healthiest coral reefs that we still have on our planet. And there are still some really healthy coral reefs that are possible to protect and worth saving. So all of that knowledge, both from the ecology side, the taxonomy side, but also the environmental kind of conservation world, that all informs my work.

I really want the people who see my work to fall in love with coral animals the way that I did because that’s what inspired me to want to act to protect them. So I really hope that my work can bring that alien exotic beauty above the surface for people to appreciate, even if they’re not able to put their faces underwater themselves. 

So is that the aim of your work? What reactions are you trying to inspire? 

I try to encourage people to protect the corals in a gentle and personal way. We protect what we love, and we love what we know and understand and feel familiar with.

The ocean is a dark, mysterious and scary place for a lot of people. I want to help people understand it in a different way and I think art has an immense power to shape how we understand the world. By portraying these coral reef ecosystems in kind of fantastical, colourful, beautiful ways, I try to celebrate them and invoke emotions and individuality so that people might become more curious. I think it has to be a really personal exploration because that’s the only way we’re going to feel truly motivated to make long-lasting change.

What’s the process behind your creations? 

A lot of my work uses similar themes. Because coral reefs bleach white, I think that’s a really stark way to visualise climate change. So that’s a theme that I explore in a lot of my work. Corals are not necessarily as colourful as what you see in my work. But I like taking an artistic licence and not being completely realistic because it’s more about evoking that sense of wonder. 

When I come up with my designs, a lot of them are swirly and evoke ideas of weather patterns or just changing places. The swirling forms are kind of anti-gravity, elevating the reef off the seafloor and putting it into space where its fate is up in the air. So conceptually, to me, the fate of coral reefs is in our hands, and we get to decide if they’re doomed or not. I think having work that swirls from colourful to bleached or maybe the other way around is up to interpretation for a lot of people. 

In terms of my actual sculpting process, when I come up with a design like that,  it looks very freeform, but it’s actually extremely meticulously planned out. I know where every single piece of hardware is going to go on the wall before I start building a single piece. So I map everything out first on the computer and then I create a full-scale map on the floor of my studio. I build each piece in relation to each other, so it’s really like a big three-dimensional puzzle. So it’s really meticulous, takes tons of planning and sometimes the installations that I do are many metres high or require a lot of logistical strategies to install them.

How does it change depending on the place where you’re going to show it or the exhibition? 

I do a lot of site-specific work that is commissioned for permanent installation and integrated into the architecture of an office building or a hotel or something like that. I like working really big because I think that gets people’s attention and it brings up this idea of one small person creating something really enormous which is a metaphor for the impact that one person can have. So I do try to focus on really large-scale stuff. But I also do some residential commissions.

I also show in museums around the world and things like that. It’s fun to do site-specific stuff because I can kind of integrate it into the architecture and respond to how the light moves through a space.

Do you get to see the way that people react to it? Have you had a response that really stood out to you and touched you? 

Sometimes I’ll go into a place where my work is installed and just pretend I don’t know what I’m doing there. But I don’t get to do that very often. There have been a couple of times when I’ve seen someone have a really emotional response, and maybe tear up. That has been really important to me as motivation to keep going.

You see a lot of cynical stuff when you’re in a museum show. You sort of overhear comments and you don’t know if it’s actually getting through to people. But seeing little glimmers like that is really, really lovely.

Do you find it difficult to stay positive?

Yeah, definitely. I’m not naive and I understand the science behind all of it so it is really hard to stay positive sometimes because things really aren’t looking good for coral reefs. They’re not going to disappear altogether because certain coral species are resilient and they’re going to persist like weeds in a garden. But the beauty and the value of the coral reef come from diversity and redundant species that help each other out or compete with one another in important ways. So if a number of those species go extinct or disappear in certain areas, they just won’t function in the same way. So it is really hard to know what’s happening.

I think the way that I stay positive is through interacting with people who are moved by the work and are using that to do their own things that can help. But also by visiting reefs that are still really healthy. I try to get back in the water at least once a year and see a healthy coral reef because they are still out there.

Why do you choose to show coral reefs through clay? 

It started out as a medium that was available to me. I had used clay before and there was a ceramic studio at my high school. But once I started working with it and really learned what reef-building coral does, I realised that calcium carbonate is what corals essentially sculpt their skeletons out of. That’s a material that’s limestone essentially, and that is really common in glaze materials so there’s sort of a chemical parallel between my work and real corals.

There’s also this sense of fragility that is really undeniable. So conceptually that sense of fragility is really important in my work. But you can imagine that porcelain and anemone tentacles are extremely fragile. Making something with clay is so difficult, it takes a lot of patience and troubleshooting. Ceramic is not a friendly material at first, because everything is so fragile. But if you handle everything properly and you protect it at certain stages of the production process, it’s actually pretty resilient. 

What’s the most difficult thing in the physical design process? 

I think there are certain challenges that are related to working with design-build teams. When I’m doing a big project for an office building in an earthquake country, for example, there is a risk with installing the work. I’ve had some really interesting experiences working with engineers and architects to fine-tune the attachment methods that I use and really make sure that my work is going on the wall securely in a way that’s not going to kill somebody. Packing and shipping artwork like this is also really challenging because it’s so fragile. I work with professional art handlers to pack all my work now.

Have you had any projects that you’ve particularly enjoyed or that have touched you in a certain way? 

There are a couple of projects that I’ve done that are in Indonesia that are extremely meaningful. There’s also a project that I did for the Coral Triangle Centre in Bali that is a community project. So I didn’t sculpt everything myself, we actually worked with a team of around 200 volunteers, artisans and marine scientists and everybody got together and sculpted ceramic corals. We ended up installing about 2,000 of them on a wall in an installation that I designed for the Centre for Marine Conservation in Bali. So that was a really fun one. 

The other, the biggest work that is also in Indonesia is at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. That was a commission that I created myself, and it’s absolutely enormous. It’s a big, swirling wall installation that is in the kind of atrium of the embassy building. And that one’s called Confluence, and it’s part of my Art Changing Seas series.

So you have exhibitions literally all over the world? 

Yeah, I just completed one in Capri in Italy. That one is a brand new one that I am hoping to be able to share photos of soon.

Can you tell me about the sustainability aspect of your work? 

Obviously, it’s coming from the environment and it’s a natural material. I try to be mindful of where my materials are sourced and I buy all my clay in the state of California. So it’s all made, you know, within the state. So it’s relatively local. I try to do the same with my glazes. I am very mindful of resource use in general. I think water and electricity are big resources that I have to think about because I have electric kilns in my studio and water is required for all kinds of steps of the fabrication process. So I try to limit resource use.

But, in terms of environmental impacts and climate change, there’s often an imperative put on individuals to focus on their own impacts, but that often distracts from the focus on big corporations and policymakers that really make the outsized impact on these environmental issues. A lot of the work I do is trying to remind people about the advocacy work that we can do to raise awareness and push for reforms on a bigger scale instead because it’s always the individual who gets the blame, not the massive companies.

If you could tell people what to do to help the situation what would you say? 

I think the biggest thing any of us can do is what we are uniquely skilled at. I got some really interesting advice when I was first starting out from an author and marine scientist named Carl Cicina. He said, do what you can uniquely do to make a difference, and I think that refers to the personal impact that I was talking about. Each of us has to feel personally inspired and motivated in our own way to do whatever it is. It could be advocacy, policy change, research, Marine science or social science. There are so many facets to the problem and to the solutions, and we need to come up with creative solutions in order to fight climate change and also reduce the other threats that are on coral reefs. So coming up with new ways to develop and promote renewable energy is a big one. 

I think there are so many exciting things that all need to happen at once. And so we need everyone to feel excited about doing their own part of that process.

And what do you think the situation will be in 10 years time? 

I think we’re going to see a lot more bleaching events. Every summer is the hottest summer on record now. But I also think there’s so much awareness growing really quickly among young people. So it makes me hopeful that there are a lot of young people who are becoming really passionate about demanding change.

I think technology is going to play a big part in it. I think we’re way more connected now than we used to be, and that’s only going to keep growing. And so I think it’s possible to hold people accountable in new ways, and I can only imagine where that’s going to go in the next 10 years. So I’m cautiously optimistic. 

Timur Bartels is an actor, best known for his roles in the series “Club der roten Bänder” and films like “Rumspringa – Ein Amish in Berlin” and “Manta Manta – Zwoter Teil.” He works on films and series for TV, VoD, and cinema. Additionally, he has a solo music project where he writes German pop songs. Recently, he founded his own film production company, “easy productions.” His first project was a music video for SDP, Sido, and Esther Graf for the song “Mama hat gesagt.” The video was a great success, reaching #1 on the YouTube charts and winning several film festivals. In this project, he served as producer and director.

CREDITS

Art Direction & Styling: BELVIS SOLER

Photography: JENS WITTWER

Starring: TIMUR BARTELS @ WE ARE EASY ARTISTS

Make Up Artist: KARIM SATTAR

Hair Stylist: ISABEL MARIA SIMONETH

Styling Assistant: SASKIA FRY

Through Beatriz Chachamovits’s work, the gap between art and science is bridged, offering a deeper understanding of marine life. Her unique and provocative approach urges viewers to recognise the urgent need for action and to reflect on the role we all play in the decline of coral reefs.

What is the current state of coral reefs?

The state of coral reefs at the moment is really dire. We are facing the fourth massive global bleaching in the entire globe. The world is losing its coral reefs faster than we ever imagined. There’s a lot to do and little time to do it. 

What about Florida?

The situation in Florida is precarious. Since the 70s, we’ve been losing the thicket of the reef really fast. In some areas, we have around 2% of coverage left. Our reef here used to be 300 miles long and it’s just been hammered with diseases and problems nonstop. 

There is an underwater epidemic called the stony coral tissue loss disease, which is a disease that infects the coral tissue and destroys and kills the coral colony in around four weeks, which is super fast. That disease started here in Miami in 2014. Since then, it’s been 10 years since this is ravaging the coral reefs here and it has expanded out throughout the whole Caribbean. But they have also been decimated because of rising temperatures in the water, because of the pollution runoff and nutrient runoff that we have here in Florida. Florida is really agricultural land and owned by the sugar farms and there’s no regulation for how much nutrients they put in the water. During the wet season, this chemical runoff is very problematic for corals. 

We are in the first line of actually losing our reefs here. That’s one of the reasons why I moved here because I felt like I could actually do something about it. Last year we had a record temperature in the ocean, it was 101 Fahrenheit, the corals didn’t even have the chance to battle, they just died and it was horrific. It was on the news everywhere in the world. We lost at least 15% of the 20% of corals that we still had. Some of them started to bounce back around November but the mortality rate was huge. Scientists everywhere were scrambling to take coral species out of the ocean so that they could save them.

Was there a moment when you decided you were going to dedicate your life to the corals?

Totally. There was a magical moment in 2006 when I started talking about corals. I was in the northern part of Brazil in a state called Bahia and I was drawing algae and seaweed on the beach. This man approached me, and after seeing my drawings he took me to dive in a little cave that was completely covered with corals. The ceiling had openings so the sun’s rays would come in and reveal and obscure the colours, palettes and movements. I saw critters everywhere and tiny little silverfish swaying from side to side. There was this beautiful spotted Ray covered in sand in the bottom, and it was yellow and blue, and all these colours, just screaming in my face. And more so than that, the harmony, the precision of movement, the shapes, the form, the texture, everything about it was, it was just like, an explosion of love for me. That moment changed my life. 

Once I left the ocean, I was like: Why isn’t anyone talking about this? I’m going to talk about this. And here I am almost 15 years later still talking about it. 

What is your dream response to your work?

I want people to fall in love with the ocean, just like I did. You only care about things that you love. So if we don’t know it, if we can’t love and care for it then there is no positive outcome. My deepest hope is that people will be enchanted by it, just the way that I was. Then that enchantment will transform into love, love into care and care into protection and preservation. 

Do you work a lot with scientists to understand the reef and alongside your exhibitions?

I started doing a lot of the research by myself because I didn’t know scientists, but as I moved to Miami I started to be more connected. I started to collaborate with them, ask questions and go deeper. I came to Key West to do an art residency for six months and I never left. I spent six months connecting with fishermen, marine enthusiasts and scientists and doing dives to discover and see the diseases and understand the death. That was the most hands-on time that I had in the ocean and it was instrumental for me to understand what’s happening here in Florida. Ever since then, I’ve been creating that connection with other scientists so that I can keep going. 

Having scientific counterparts has been eye-opening to me in the way that I can communicate their research, or that I can communicate the problems of the reef, especially through my interactive installations. Having those conversations with them gave me a roadmap on how to create those installations. But the creation of the work itself I do myself.

Can you tell me about your exhibition “Can You Sea Change”?

“Can You Sea Change” was a partnership between a couple of friends of mine and myself. One is a digital mapping artist, and her partner is a sound artist. The sound piece was Charlie, and he is part of DJs for Climate Action, and he also has connections within the Greenpeace sound library. So a lot of those sounds were a mix of sounds that he made plus actual sounds from the reef. Natasha is the digital counterpart of this equation. She created the image that is shown on the ceramic pieces. Some of them are actual footage from the reef, and some of them are code-generated images that she created. We show a cascading moment from a happy, thriving reef and then the reefs are heating up and dying. So the idea of this piece was for us to show the cycle of life and death that corals are facing because of us. 

What about “Into The Great Dying”?

In 2022, I started this trilogy of interactive installations called Into The Great Dying. The Great Dying was the largest mass extinction that the planet has ever undertaken, where we lost around 90% of life on land and 70% of life and sea. It was 250 million years ago. The conditions that we are creating right now with the Anthropocene mirror the conditions of the planet at that time. So this series of exhibitions is to talk about the way that we’re behaving and what we can do about it. 

The first one was called “Into The Great Dying: Steps We Take”. For that piece, I covered a gallery space that had two entrances with over 2000 unfired ceramic pieces of corals that mimicked the corals we have in Florida. I covered the entire floor with it and I invited people to enter the room and it was devastating. It was the most bizarre behavioural experiment I’ve ever done in my life. People destroyed the whole room in 30 minutes by walking on top of it. There wasn’t any space inside of the room that you couldn’t destroy. It was emotional for me to see four months of my work being destroyed in 30 minutes. It was the most incredible mirror I could have ever created to understand human behaviour and the acceleration of destruction, how we behave and how easy it is for us to destroy. It was intense.

Out of all of your exhibitions, what was the best reaction that you’ve ever had? 

The one that moved me the most was after everyone destroyed everything in that room, there was this one girl about eight or nine years old that went around the whole room trying to find the pieces that weren’t broken and started building something with it. That’s why I teach kids. We’re leaving this planet for them. We need them to know what they’re getting and to be up to the task and to give that information to them. So that was easily the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen in my work.

Is there a reason you always choose to work with clay? 

Yes, there are many reasons. One, clay is just so magical to work with and it reminds me of the feeling that I had when I first met corals. Secondly, Clay emits the feeling of coral, in the sense that clay can be forever, but it can break in one second and that’s exactly what corals are. Every time we excavate we find pieces of ceramics from the history of humans everywhere in the world. So it can last forever but if you drop it it will break. But those little pieces will last forever. Clay and ceramics are one of the first mediums that we created as a human society in history. Corals are one of the first ecosystems that we’ve ever had in the ocean. So there are many connections as to why I use ceramics. 

Before ceramics, my medium was drawing. Now I’m kind of going back to that.

Will your new project mix these mediums together? 

Yes. So my new project is a mix of drawings and ceramics. But it’s a constitution of three new bodies of work. It’s really a punch in the face with colour. I’m leaving my monochromatic world and going into full-blown colour.

Do you find it difficult to stay positive about the state of coral reefs?

It’s really tough to stay positive, especially in the world that we live in today. We are looking at a world that is abandoning science and looking at their pockets and what’s beneficial for them. They’re not thinking about the longevity of the planet, people’s kids, breathing or having clean water. But I know a lot of really good people that really are doing something about it. Especially here in South Florida.

I’ve also been looking and talking about this in other places in the world and there is a rise of people wanting to do something about it. The worse we get, the more people I see wanting to act. So there is kind of a balance of optimism but right now I’m not in an optimistic mindset.

Do you have an idea of what you want people to start doing to help? Do you have solutions? 

There is no roadmap for solutions. The thing about coral reefs is that the solution is not onefold because it takes everyone to do it. One of our biggest powers is consumption, how we use our money and where we’re putting our money. That is number one for individuals, but this problem is not an individual problem. This problem is a societal problem. It’s a problem with the sugarcane factories, it’s a problem with the government. It’s a problem with industrialisation as a whole. It’s a problem of how we lead our world and it’s not an easy thing to change. That’s why it’s so complicated. 

There are tiny things that we can do to feel like we’re contributing, but what we really need is leaders who really understand that this is a problem. So a lot of the solution comes from us understanding that this is bigger than ourselves and asking for help and also requiring the people that are in power to do so as we need. Because we need to have a planet there you know, and without the ocean, there is no planet.

Do you have challenges with communicating this to people and with your use of clay? 

Of course. Clay is super challenging. You have to be so detached because it requires so much commitment and decision and then you can lose it in a second. But it can also go into the kiln and come out as something incredible. So in ceramics, you need to deal with the fact that all of the effort that you’re putting into this single piece might not be what you actually want it to be. But that has also a lot to do with the way that things are going in the world. There are so many metaphors and overlapping ideas of societal progress in the way that you work with ceramics. 

It’s an important part of my practice. I have laid out pieces for people to destroy, I have dissolved my structures. I have put sculptures inside of water and they dissolve throughout the exhibition to talk about ocean acidification. So I’m really prone to destroying my work. It doesn’t faze me when things like this happen. I do that to myself because that’s what we’re doing to the planet.

Interview with Japanese composer and pianist Koki Nakano

How did your collaboration with Issey Miyake initially come about?

I was asked to compose music for their 2023 S/S Paris collection. I was thrilled to hear that the head designer, Mr. Satoshi Kondo, owns all of my albums and listens to them while designing. He shared this with me during our first meeting, which was a great start for our collaboration.

What aspects of Issey Miyake ‘s design philosophy resonate most with your own approach to composing music?

I admire their concept of continuity and fluidity, exploring new shapes while cutting fabric as little as possible. Mr. Kondo isn’t afraid to place simple principles like “joy” or “hope” at the forefront of their innovative, subtle craftsmanship. I’m fascinated by their approach, which always celebrates humanity while exploring the edges of contemporary design with unique perspectives. I often reflect on a famous composer’s idea that a phrase contains all the information needed for its development. I take my time to discover the most authentic progression of any material with potential, which aligns with ISSEY MIYAKE’s principle of “A Piece of Cloth.”

Could you describe the process of creating music for Issey Miyake’s runway shows? How do you translate the visual and tactile aspects of fashion into sound?

I’ve worked on two collections with them. For both, we had extensive meetings before I started composing. Mr. Kondo and his team shared the concepts, prototypes, and mood boards for the collections with me. From there, I researched materials that echo the theme and aim to create an emotional narrative that spans the 15-18 minute duration of the show. I always aim to create an experience where models and the audience immerse themselves in the universe ISSEY MIYAKE has created. In line with their “A Piece of Cloth” principle, I try to make the music flow like a “long breath” throughout the entire show.

Issey Miyake is known for combining traditional craftsmanship with cutting-edge technology. How does this blend of tradition and innovation influence your creative process in this collaboration?

My classical training, affection for acoustic and natural sounds, and curiosity for new materials – especially in electronic music – align well with their approach. This blend of tradition and innovation naturally resonates with my own work.

Fashion and music both have the power to evoke emotion and tell a story. How do you feel your music complements or contrasts with the clothing in Issey Miyake ’s collections?

I consider myself an emotional person and performer. I’ve performed live for my previous collaborations with them, and what I aim to bring to the collection is an emotional journey.

Sustainability in Music and Fashion

Sustainability is becoming an important topic in both the fashion and music industries. In what ways do you see your music engaging with ideas of sustainability? How has your collaboration with ISSEY MIYAKE influenced your views on environmental consciousness in art?

I like to think of our bodies as extensions of the environment, rather than seeing it in opposition. ISSEY MIYAKE often uses expressions like “clothed in nature,” and their garments sometimes act as unique models of the connection between the environment and our bodies. This concept has been inspiring for me.

Do you think music, like fashion, can contribute to discussions around sustainability? How?

Yes, I believe that creators can introduce diverse forms of joy and playfulness, which can shift the way we think about development and consumption. By encouraging non-linear progression, we can foster a more sustainable mindset. I see this as one of the most important roles of creation today.

In your compositions, do you consciously think about creating in a way that is “sustainable” artistically, perhaps by focusing on longevity or emotional resonance rather than trend-driven works? Can you give an example of a piece or project where you incorporated principles of sustainability, whether conceptually or practically?

My first album Pre-choreographed explored the inseparability of movement and sound. My previous album Oceanic Feeling was inspired by the French poet Romain Rolland’s concept of “a sensation of eternity” and “a feeling of being one with the external world.” My latest album Ululō focuses on the struggles of existence in a world defined by limitations, with a sense of romanticism.

My interest lies in creating music that explores the frameworks and limitations that surround us, making them as fluid and soft as possible. For instance, every time I listen to the second movement of M. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major, I am moved by how its melodies fulfil and accompany me. I have immense respect for the methods of Occidental music that create this feeling through harmonies and orchestrations. As a non-Western artist, I aim to bring something new to this warmth, using both traditional instruments and modern technology.

Creative Philosophy and Future Directions

Many of your compositions feel deeply connected to nature and the organic flow of life. How do you see these natural elements tying into your music’s sustainability message?

I often consider sounds of the piano as a my voice or body, and other elements as its environment or a landscape in my compositions. often I explore different balance/relation between these two, it’s a kind of a research for alternative, better relation with surroundings for myself. 

In a world where sustainability is no longer a buzzword but a necessity, eco-museums have emerged as cultural sanctuaries that offer more than just an exhibition of the past. These innovative spaces are pioneering the way we preserve history, art, and nature, while actively engaging with the principles of environmental conservation, community empowerment, and sustainable development. Far from traditional museums, eco-museums blend heritage with environmental stewardship, offering visitors an immersive experience into the cultural, social, and ecological landscape of their surroundings.

What is an Eco-Museum?

An eco-museum is not confined to a building with curated collections of artifacts and exhibits. Instead, it’s a living museum that stretches across landscapes, communities, and ecosystems. The concept, first developed in France in the 1970s by museologist Hugues de Varine and historian Georges Henri Rivière, aims to integrate cultural heritage with the natural environment. These museums focus on the relationship between local communities and their environment, encouraging active participation in heritage conservation while promoting sustainability.

Unlike traditional museums, eco-museums are often community-led, meaning locals are deeply involved in preserving their own history, traditions, and environment. These spaces also tend to have decentralized structures, with exhibitions scattered across villages, towns, or natural landscapes. This structure ensures that the museum itself is eco-friendly, minimizing the environmental impact of central, high-energy-consuming buildings.

A Global Movement for Sustainability  

Eco-museums have spread across the globe, each tailored to reflect the unique cultural and environmental aspects of its region. Below, we take a closer look at some of the world’s most inspiring eco-museums, each offering a distinct approach to sustainability, cultural preservation, and environmental education.

Parco Museo Minerario dell’Amiata, Tuscany, Italy

Nestled in the picturesque landscape of Tuscany, the Parco Museo Minerario dell’Amiata (Amiata Mining Park Museum) showcases the intertwined histories of mining, nature, and community. This open-air museum stretches across the slopes of Monte Amiata and invites visitors to explore old mining sites, each restored and integrated into the natural environment. Once a source of local economic livelihood, the mines have become an educational tool for visitors to learn about Tuscany’s mining heritage, the environmental impacts of industrial activities, and the importance of ecological restoration.

The museum is powered by renewable energy sources, and many of the exhibits focus on environmental rehabilitation, emphasizing the need for balance between economic activity and sustainability.

Ecomuseo del Vento, Spain

High in the Pyrenean region of Spain, the Ecomuseo del Vento (Wind Eco-museum) celebrates the ancient and renewable power of the wind. Here, traditional windmills, solar panels, and wind turbines work side by side, highlighting the local community’s centuries-old reliance on natural energy sources. The museum serves as a learning hub, demonstrating the use of sustainable energy practices from the past and promoting modern technologies that harness clean energy.

The eco-museum also takes pride in protecting its surrounding wildlife and flora, ensuring the preservation of biodiversity through organic farming practices and sustainable tourism. By incorporating eco-friendly infrastructure and actively engaging the local community in conservation, the museum stands as a model of sustainability.

Highland Folk Museum, Scotland

The Highland Folk Museum, often referred to as one of the oldest living history museums in the world, has been at the forefront of sustainable heritage conservation. Located in the Cairngorms National Park, the museum comprises traditional thatched cottages and crofts that recreate life in Scotland from the 1700s to the 1950s. The museum uses sustainable building materials and techniques, such as thatching and natural insulation, to ensure the preservation of both cultural and ecological heritage.

The museum grounds are home to several biodiversity conservation projects, including initiatives that protect native plant species and support sustainable agricultural practices. The Highland Folk Museum beautifully illustrates how eco-museums can intertwine history with nature, offering visitors a meaningful reflection on humanity’s coexistence with the natural world.

Bokrijk Open-Air Museum, Belgium

Set amidst lush forests and meadows, the Bokrijk Open-Air Museum in Belgium presents a dynamic model for integrating culture and nature. The museum features over 120 historic buildings that reflect traditional Flemish architecture, each restored using eco-friendly methods such as local timber and sustainable stone quarrying. Bokrijk’s focus on traditional craftsmanship and sustainable building techniques serves as a reminder of the enduring importance of eco-conscious construction.

Bokrijk is also home to a variety of environmental education programs, including workshops on permaculture, organic gardening, and traditional farming techniques. These programs engage visitors in the art of sustainable living, making Bokrijk not only a museum of history but also a beacon of green innovation.

Ecomuseum of the North, Sweden

In the far north of Sweden, the Ecomuseum of the North is a vast, decentralized museum stretching across 3,000 square kilometers. Spanning more than 100 sites, this eco-museum encompasses both natural landscapes and cultural heritage, from historical ironworks to reindeer herding villages. This Swedish marvel emphasizes the role of indigenous Sámi culture and their relationship with the environment, offering insights into the sustainable practices of one of Europe’s oldest cultures.

The museum’s dedication to preserving the local ecosystem is evident in its energy-efficient buildings and focus on the sustainable use of natural resources. Through collaboration with local communities, the Ecomuseum of the North has created a space where culture, history, and environmental conservation thrive together.

As we seek to protect our environment, learn from our ancestors, and build more sustainable communities, eco-museums invite us to engage in a deeper dialogue about our role in shaping the world—and how we can tread more lightly upon it.

+ Words:
Stephanie Selçuk-Frank
Luxiders Magazine Contributor

+ Image Highlight:
© Lindsey Lamont via Unsplash

FASCINATION WITH NATURE

Having had the opportunity to meet Ansel Adams in his early teenage years, taking part in a workshop he was hosting in Yosemite National Park, Keith Peterson has found the impact of this encounter influential to his practice later in life. Although he accounts being too young to understand the technical aspects of the workshop, the love for both photography and nature which he learned here have stuck with him to this day.  

This fascination with nature runs deep within the photographer and he makes it evident in his work. Many of the chemical reactions he photographs have similarities to the elements seen in the natural environment, and he reminisces on the “Great deal of satisfaction” he receives when he is able to replicate things such as flowers and trees in his photographic experiments. His interest and love for nature have also inspired him to create his own pigments for his work, using mineral and organic matter that he collects whilst on train hikes.  

Ever since childhood, Jakob Kudsk Steensen has been fascinated with the video gaming medium. It’s ability to transform the world around you, has inspired many of his immersive virtual art pieces. Jakob’s passion for virtual reality soon combined with his wonder surrounding the natural environment, specifically wetlands. Bringing his two passions together, Jakob explores past and present stories interacting with our landscape, reframing our perception of the world around us.

FOLKLORE AND SONG: NATURE’S VOICES

Who is Jakob Kudsk Steensen and what is your vision?

Yeah, my name is Jakob Kudsk Steensen, I’m an artist. I’m from Denmark, but for the past ten years I worked in New York, and I recently moved to Berlin. In my practice, I work a lot with video game technologies, I think a lot about how to use them beyond the usual vernacular or video games. Which is very aim and level based and kind of follows like a more rational experience and design, where you have to touch or interact with things very one to one. So I specialize in a very intuitive, collaborative and environmental way of using video game technologies in particular, to convey overlooked or forgotten perspectives on natural histories, different species, and things you might not think about so much in nature. Recently I also started working a lot with songs and kinds of folklore and looking into lost sensibilities and words used to describe and talk about our relationship to different environments. So, I also now start to work off a song and create this kind of rhythmic, almost hypnotic instruments that people that is like a short description of what I do.

Yeah, sounds really good. So obviously your art is kind of free and is quite immersive. Can you explain, like, as an artist, what made you kind of gravitate towards that medium? Were you always interested in it? Has it been a bit of a journey for you?

Yeah, I was actually just thinking about that. I was just out swimming and as I came up, I was thinking about this memory. As a  child, my friend Simon was round my house, we often would play video games together. So this is like a long term passion for me since I was eight or something. So I really grew up loving video games, right at the time where more complicated 3D worlds became available, particularly this kind of first person perspective. It’s very common today, but it means that you can really navigate through space. So my friend Simon, he would always have anxiety when in a video games, especially when we’d have to be underwater. Because underwater you could move in all these different directions that you normally physically can’t. And sitting in front of a computer, it became kind of like this weird sensation in your brain as you are shifting. Like what you’re looking at your hand on a mouse, your fingers on the keyboard. It’s kind of tactile, but suddenly your perspective is shifting and moving in all these impossible ways. So for me, it’s just been something I’ve felt very drawn to, really. I can remember my kind of childhood years and as a teenager, we’re really informed by the explosion of this new medium, more like complex 3D worlds.

So for me, it just seems like a normal, intuitive thing to gravitate towards. And within the past five years, with this new second wave of virtual reality and augmented reality and more recently being able to create really large scale immersive installations, it feels like we are now able to move beyond the two dimensional screen and we can really embrace the kind of conceptual dimensions of 3D space in new ways that we haven’t done before. Like getting away from two dimensional art towards something else, something more corporal, something more physical and something where the human body is really at the center of the experience. That’s why I feel really kind of attracted by these so called immersive media.

That sounds really complex. It’s like a really lovely kind of memory and it really encapsulates kind of what your work means, I think what you’re of interested it sounds so interesting. So you had a of recent show in Berlin inspired by the wetland of Brandenburg.

Yeah. Brandenburg region.

Could you kind of explain a bit about why you chose them as your main muse in some of your work?

Because I think some people would think, like, oh, obviously forests and flowers are a big source of inspiration, but wetlands doesn’t come into your head automatically is something kind of beautiful in nature.

So, in the past, I’ve worked with more iconic narratives that we are used to thinking about when we consider the natural world or climate change. I did a project in 2016 called Primal Tourism, which took place on a tropical sinking island, the island of Bora Bora, and reanimated another virtual reality artwork. I work with the songs of extinct birds, and I also work with glaciers and different forests. So, I’ve gone from working with types of landscape that we immediately think about when we think about our relationship to ecology and the climate but for the past two years, I’ve tried to go even further and looking for stories about environment that we more rarely think about. What I found was that wetlands is an absolutely essential and very overlooked type of ecosystem because any large city and civilization in the world is built by a wetland. And it’s theorized, you know, that all modern humans come from wetlands in Africa. So it’s like we’ve forgotten the importance of wetlands. And this is why we have issues with freshwater. It’s why we have toxic kind of rivers and lakes around Europe and the. States, because the definition of a wetland. Is an ecosystem that’s able to sustain its own freshwater.

And freshwater, of course, is essential for. Mammals and human survival. So we’ve kind of forgotten this muddy very essential and important landscape right beneath our feet. In Berlin I created this artwork called Berl Berl, the first four letters of the word Berlin. It’s actually an old Slavic word that people used in the region in the Middle Ages, and it means swamp. The very name of Berlin mean swamp.

So I was invited to this art show in Berlin, and I created this immersive installation in the Hallmarks which was normally a nightclub. And then I turned it into this living swampy virtual instrument that people enter and kind of get hypnotized or sink into. People were spending between one and 3 hours inside of the artwork and then kind of lay on pillows, walk around, sit down, and really be kind of hypnotized and into this primordial swamp soup. So that’s the reason I made that artwork Berl Berl in Berlin specifically.

I obviously know you have done stuff recently. You mentioned new elements to your work, kind of first starting to work with of music and song. You mentioned kind of working with a singer, Arca and Matt McCall. Could you kind of mention about what this journey towards kind of including music in your work was like, how you went about it, what first inspired you to include kind of focus on the things like that in your work?

 Yeah, definitely. It started with a book I read by an author in the UK called Melanie Challenger, called On Extinction. It’s really the book that led me down a path of focusing a lot on folklore, folk words, song and this more overlooked landscape beneath our feet everywhere. Because initially Michelle writes that the words we use to describe the world are the words we can use to protect it. And so I became fascinated, especially in Berlin and looking into its natural history. That there used to be a multiplicity of different cultures and languages before the Middle Ages in the entire region. And these would speak many different dialects of Slavic and other like Eastern European dialects. And then moved to German. And these dialects are often referred to as singing cultures. So also in Ireland, it’s the same. Actually, in some places of Denmark, a lot of wetlands are surrounding by these singing, diverse dialects.

And cultures have songs as a way of navigating the world. So they would use instead of having a written culture where we are documenting and writing down our stories about the world, a song has different verses and it can mute say, then change through time to adapt to how specific value system or landscape is transforming. So song is really something very like malleable, very mutational, but also very descriptive and something that can create a strong sense of belonging. In the ad work Bell Bell, I invited this singer Arca to respond with a series of short verses and words based on images and folklore that I would send her from the actual place. So I sent an old Slavic song about a word made of fire, I sent a tale, a little story of these nymphs and how they would sing and lure men into the rivers. I’d send like stories about this frog king that used to govern the wetlands. And I’d sent different images of moths, of insects, leaves, mud, like fungal systems, all sorts of material that I have from the wings around Berlin. And then she would send little verses in conversation sounds to the material.

And above that, she would also sing to the artwork like it was a cathedral, because that kind of place and it feels kind of like a church and it’s referred to a church of Berlin. It’s like the most famous nightclub in the city where the exhibition took place. So she would also sing to it kind of like a cathedral, kind of more like a Christian way of relating to space, but also very shamanic and very intuitive and personal. So you get this total mixture of something that felt religious, something that felt personal, something that felt very constructed or conversational. And then Matt McCall, who was this guy I worked with many times before, he makes sound at the Natural History Museum in New York, expertise in working with natural recordings. So we went out together and record sounds from the excellence and we work with the Natural History Archive in Berlin to get sounds recorded. We really mix together the songs of archive recordings of wetlands and swamps around villains from the past without recordings from the present. And this is mixed together in real time by Bell Bell, which essentially is a virtual world and a living instrument.

So it never sounds or looks the same. It just mixes together all these different elements in real time and it becomes this strange thing that moves and shifts and sometimes feels like an uproar and then at times it feels like nature documentary and it’s really turning you through different emotional spectrums and different perspectives and wetlands continuously. But that’s why I’m interested in folklore, songs and verses now, because it’s a way of viewing an ecosystem with something very but it’s less static, it’s something that can change. Different words can be combined in different sequences, they can change tonality and kind of change expression, and therefore the feeling of the landscape. And in Berl Berl, everything you see in the artwork in this virtual swamp controls what happens to the sounds. So if it’s very rainy and muddy, certain bursts the sound is more archaic. If it’s  sunny and you’re in the middle of some trees, it sounds more realistic and like birds. So as you’re journeying through the environment, the songs follow and vice versa. So it’s like this dual system where all these different elements are connected and no one really knows exactly what’s going to happen each time is exhibited.

JAKOB KUDSK STEENSEN: WHAT NEXT?

Yeah, it’s honestly so lovely to hear you talk about it. You can really kind of almost, like, sense your passion and your kind of drive towards your art through your work, and it’s wonderful.  Your recent group exhibition for the Sonar Festival in Spain was also inspired by a different set of wetlands. So a lot of people imagine wetlands as a kind of obscure space between water and life and kind of  liminal space where we’re kind of in a sense of in between. Do you kind of feel that sense? And what kind of is it about wetlands themselves that truly has kind of captured your attention?

Yeah, it’s actually funny as I start explicitly working with wetlands mainly with Berl Berl and this artwork Liminal Lands that you’re mentioning, I learned that my favorite artworks from the past actually took place or depicted urbanised wetlands. It wasn’t really a rational intention. It’s just like this artwork, animated, takes place in a mountainous wetlands. One of my other works, Aqua Phobia takes place in a wetland, in Brooklyn Galleries in London. So I found that I’m attracted to these limbo, morphing, undefinable landscapes. It’s like they give you space to imagine the world in new ways. They give you the space to move beyond realistic representation. They give you kind of a dimension, a less rational dimension with us, less pressure for you to define everything you’re saying and doing, and you can kind of things into and play out.

Essentially these less definable realms there are less boundaries surrounding whats living in the soil, what’s living in the trees, what’s living in the water, all creatures have very close relationships. It’s like an inter species ecosystem. And there’s also a place where life at different scales, let’s say a deer and bacteria in the soil, a bird in a tree, they all influence each other very closely. So you get this place where you can really think about interconnectivity of life at different scales, and you can really imbue it with a lot of mythology and imagination. And being someone that’s worked with video game technologies and very like industrial 3D tools. For most of my life, I’ve been curious about that, this kind of freedom of imagination. Yet having to adhere to stories from a specific place is something that’s just very attractive to me. It’s almost like, what would you say, like a synonym for the world today, where we have all this control through technology. We think we have organic patterns in the world and our subconscious, our dreams and everything, we can’t really control those elements fully. So it’s just a way of working with wetlands in specific that you can kind of imbue with all this imagination.

And so this artwork, Limited Lands, was made in 2021 with an art foundation called Luma. So I spent a whole year documenting changes to a landscape based on salt, fresh water, bacteria and algae and how they are changing what things look like. For example, a branch on a tree can be brown and look like what you think of as a tree one day. Then the week later, it can turn into a white coated crystal. A week later it can become pink and green because the algae and salinity levels change. So you have this very trans-mutational zone that exists. The specific wetland called the Kamak exists between freshwater, salt water and the Mediterranean and more agricultural soil. So it’s this kind of membrane that really exists between worlds at all times. Some things die and live very quickly. Like I came across this bird that had fallen in the water, and then the water had become more salt, so it probably drank it and died. And then it turned into a giant crystal because a week later there had been a lot of sun. And when there’s a lot of sun, the water evaporates and everything turns into salt.

And then that salt, these different pink and green algae grow. You get this pink crystallized seagull in the landscape and all sorts of formations that are real, that are documented through this kind of 3D spatial photography. But when you look at them in isolation and you can change perspective on it, it almost looks like science fiction. So it was this idea of finding, again, these imaginative science fiction worlds right beneath our feet as a way of saying also that you don’t really need to look to life on the moon to get strong science fiction. We have it all around us. We’re just kind of forgetting about it, that the world can be that you can kind of look and be much stranger than you think, just tend to forget it the more we kind of get sucked into, let’s say, virtual medium. So this Liminal Land is a virtual reality artwork to bring  people together. Normally, where they are, the movement changes sound in the landscape. So again, it’s kind of like this idea working with the instrument and sound. So as people physically move in the artwork, they change sounds and textures in this virtual landscape. And the virtual landscape are entirely made of sounds and digitized elements from the land.

That’s a really beautiful way to kind of think of wetlands. And I think it’s so, like, poetic that your favourite art has kind of you hadn’t even realized it’s been wetlands. And I just think it’s such a slightly creepy but also kind of like destiny. So I suppose the last question I have for you is kind of what are your future plans? Do you have any upcoming projects? What have you got going on at the moment?

Yeah, I have, like, a smaller artwork coming out this summer. It’s a public artwork in Switzerland that’s based on because for the past few years, I’ve only been working on these large collaborations. So this past February, I just spent two weeks going to a glacier cave in Switzerland, and I scanned it, and I went with a friend of mine, Joe Kunan, an author. He’s writing a little short story for this artwork. And we just went to this glacial cave for two weeks, scanned it, and he’s working on a little story for it. So we did something very impulsive and intuitive in the Swiss Mountains. And that’s going to become like a video installation, but that’s kind of an intermediary project where what I really want to work on next is kind of an operatic immersive type of video game and series of exhibitions. I’m also giving a lecture at the Opera House in Finland next month as I’m really curious to start exploring these new ways of collaborating even more between the contemporary art world and these  Immersive installations between music and nature. Music is a way of telling stories and having characters and costumes and everything and then having fully distributed online worlds that people can enter to experience the artworks.,So that’s kind of where my head is at looking into the future.

HISTORY OF SLOGAN T-SHIRTS 

Slogan T-shirts have a rich history that dates back decades. They are arguably the boldest way to wear your beliefs on your body. What started as a tool for spreading political messages evolved in the late 1960s and early 1970s into symbols of rebellion and social change. Slogan T-shirts have always been deeply rooted in the countercultural movements, worn by those taking a stand against society. As T-shirts became more accessible and affordable, due to advancements in textile manufacturing, their popularity boomed. 

Early slogan tees were associated with music, protest, and anti-establishment sentiments. Bands, especially in the rock and punk scenes, started selling T-shirts stamped with their logos or rebellious statements at concerts. The political climate of the 1960s and 1970s, marked by civil rights movements, anti-Vietnam War protests, and second-wave feminism, further fueled the popularity of slogan T-shirts as a medium for voicing dissent and identity.

FEMINIST ADOPTION OF SLOGAN TEES 

Feminist slogan T-shirts emerged prominently during the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s. This era, characterised by the fight for gender equality, reproductive rights, and an end to gender-based violence, saw women using fashion as a form of protest. Slogan T-shirts became a way for feminists to make bold, public statements. Messages like “The Future is Female,” “Women’s Rights are Human Rights,” and “Girl Power” started to appear, giving wearers a way to express their beliefs and solidarity.

These shirts were not just about making a fashion statement; they were a form of activism. Wearing a feminist slogan tee in public was a way to assert one’s identity and challenge the status quo. It was also a way to build community, as others who identified with the cause could easily recognise and connect with like-minded individuals.

THE COMMERCIALISATION OF FEMINIST SLOGAN TEES

As slogan tees gained popularity and became less of a counter-cultural movement, moving into the mainstream, brands jumped on the trend. Mainstream fashion brands recognised the potential of slogan t-shirts and began creating their own. This is particularly the case for the feminist movement, with feminist slogans being used for profit rather than to promote the cause. High-street retailers and luxury brands began producing and selling T-shirts with feminist messages, often stripping them of their original political intent and rebranding them as trendy, must-have fashion items.

This phenomenon is a classic example of capitalism co-opting a social movement for profit. Even brands such as Dior took part, selling T-shirts saying “We Should All Be Feminists” for over $700. This is highly problematic since the high price makes the t-shirt exclusively available to wealthy customers, excluding the very people the feminist movement often seeks to empower. 

Fast fashion brands also adopted feminist slogans. Whilst the prices of these brands are lower and more accessible, fast fashion disproportionately impacts women. The majority of sweatshop workers are women who face daily harassment and inadequate working conditions. Buying feminist T-shirts from brands that do not protect their workers actively goes against the values of feminism.

WHERE TO GET YOUR SLOGAN TEES 

If you want to buy a slogan tee, you need to make sure you are buying it from an ethical place. This means the shop should support the cause that it promotes. For example, they could employ and empower women in the workplace, donate money to causes, or be politically active. Some good brands to check out include Black And Bleech and Feminist Trash Store. 

Black And Bleech is a brand that takes women’s rights seriously. They have donated over £20,000 to fund women’s empowerment, mainly through abortion rights and other organisations. For them, paying employees a living wage, rather than minimum wage, is fundamental and they have even changed the legal structure of their business from shareholder-led to stakeholder-led. 

Feminist Trash Store is founded upon the principles of intersectionality and sustainability. Their T-shirts are eco-friendly and 100% vegan. Every Monday Feminist Trash Store distributes their profits to organisations upholding their values of feminism, anti-racism and queer inclusion.

+ Highlight Image: ©Black and Bleech