What Else We Can Do

The pouring rain accompanied us on our way to SALTS in Birsfelden. Wet and with earthy shoes, we entered the exhibition space of ‘What are we doing?’. The night before, shortly before falling asleep, I had shared with my fellow human beings the unease that haunts me when I think to physically feel that the world is dying. Sometimes I don't know how to deal with this overwhelming, dull and grey feeling - a feeling that perhaps various climate activists know in some form or another. It feels like an extra hormone in my body that cyclically leads to strong mood swings that can sometimes take on depressive traits - similar to premenstrual dysphoric disorder. On other days, the same hormone can lead to a frenetic drive for activity, communication and political organisation. In between, we recover and seek hope together, sharing and celebrating it until we feel comfortable in our bodies again and feel the connecting warmth.

As already said, I entered the SALTS exhibition space with a rather uncomfortable level of energy that hints at the second half of the cycle. The effect of this low energy was impossible to mask from this text - I hope you understand.

On the right wall at eye level: pages that were carefully cut out from two different books - page 101 and page 38. On page 38 we read about a pronounced, almost erotic fascination with lilies of the valley. The person writing asks herself - and us - what it would be like if we could reproduce with plants. Certainly, in this case we would very quickly become much more climate-friendly, because our mobility would be reduced to the smallest possible perimeter and it would be enough to consume water and photosynthesis. The otherwise glaring inequalities of income, wealth and environmental impact would disappear of their own accord in a lily-of-the-valley existence. Great, a world in which just over 8 billion lilies of the valley sway peacefully in the wind while the sun is shining, exuding their sweet fragrance! Of course, for lilies of the valley to thrive, it needs the right pleasant climate of our temperate zone, so we would probably all be crowded together on a rather narrow surface of the earth - somehow we would manage... The two book extracts were labelled as additional texts added to the exhibition. We encountered them as almost ready-mades - a somewhat surprising element that allowed us visitors to connect fragments of stories, narrators, people and ideas. Who selected the texts? And is this question important?

Two cartoonesque hands were mounted on the back wall, constantly pointing at each other with long index fingers. They can be read as an ironic gesture in response to the title question. In fact, we are probably particularly adept at knowing what others should do and who exactly the culprits or opponents are. Such attributions are easy and quick. They can also be disempowering, either because our opponents are too strong or because we get caught up in confrontation and accusation instead of striving for a common goal.

Now let's move on to the centrepiece of the exhibition, which was almost hidden behind the hanging, glowing ceramic heart artwork. We - and our institutions - were at the centre of the film. In other words: we as artists, represented by Dorian Sari, we as climate activists, represented by Anatol Bosshard, Helma Pöppel (formerly: Klimastreik, today: Junge Grüne) and Benjamin Rytz (formerly and today just on the edge: Klimastreik, Basel2030). The institutions were positioned on the other side of the film image: Museum directors represented by Elena Filipovic (formerly: Kunsthalle Basel, today: Kunstmuseum Basel) and Josef Helfenstein (formerly: Kunstmuseum Basel), curators represented by Théo-Mario Coppola and the politicians, represented by Beat Jans (formerly: President of the Government of Basel-Stadt, today: Federal Councillor, SP) and Helma Pöppel (Junge Grüne).

Who represented the opponents in the film and who represented the sponsors? The latter are particularly interesting: increasingly financially heavy private players such as ‘charitable’ funds, philanthropic foundations, donors, galleries and auction houses - and their political and economic interests, priorities and agendas?

The film was about visibility, transparency and awareness around the climate crisis and possible improvements. Isn't the climate crisis already more than visible and tangible and actually has been incorporated into the consciousness of most institutions? Elena Filipovic said, for example, that the concrete idea of communicating her institution's carbon footprint via a newsletter was a good one, as it could be easily implemented. It had just not yet been realised, as such communication could have been perceived as greenwashing. The institutions have to take the issue of the climate crisis seriously simply because none of them want to miss out on the current image-orientated ‘sustainability politics’. So the question remains unanswered: What do we do?

On the one hand, we could try to provide the climate crisis with the money it needs to carry out its lobbying work as successfully as those with money have always done, but are currently doing so particularly brilliantly. Why does Basel-Stadt with its ‘progressive’ climate legislation not oppose these 2.6 billion Swiss francs and several hundred thousand tonnes of CO2 released during construction that are needed to drill a new motorway tunnel under the Rhine? Oh yes, we need traffic relief (actually everyone knows that motorway expansion leads to more traffic) and of course it's a national project, so we can't just decide autonomously... Sorry for the digression on this somewhat arbitrary example... It's just that sometimes the anger builds up and then, just before the end of the cycle, the dam floods. My point is that it would take a lot of money to get on par with the lobbies currently operating.

On the other hand, we could simply tickle and destabilise our neoliberal structure and infrastructure a little. Because in our cultural laboratory of hyper-flexible small-scale entrepreneurship, we do much more than just fly artworks, artists and audiences in and out. Some specialists still preach that competition is good for us - mainly because it makes us more productive, production more efficient and the profits of the owners greater. Thus, we find ourselves in structures where we are in constant competition even with our good friends and loved ones. No worker actually finds this pleasant or good. I think. And in order to be able to survive in this international competition, we are perhaps less directly exploiting nature than other industries do (except Olafur Eliasson when he flies Antarctic ice blocks around the world), but we are a prime example of self-exploitation. Ultimately, this produces more wealth for money-owners in the secondary market than most artists will ever need to survive.

Instead of continuing this logic of exploitation and ownership undiscussed, some in the art world are learning to act according to the big picture and actively practise sharing. Not in an abstract, discursive sense, but in a very concrete way. This should be obvious, because we know very well that a work of art is never created in a vacuum.

To end on a utopian note, as the exhibition did for us despite the pouring rain: Let's fix in this mud the foundation for another structure where togetherness works, where supporting each other and sharing are the core values. I would like to respond to the exhibition: We try out the commons and shared responsibility, set up a sustainable working structure and exemplify a change in values and thus hopefully a system change as soon as possible. If such an answer were to slip past my lips, my body would probably resign from producing the extra hormone.

VM