Rail: It’s kind of an experiment in itself in that way, right?
Yi: It’s kind of an omnidirectional M.C. Escher drawing. [Laughter] I wanted to not capture, but be able to pull a little focus around that which we can’t contain, and all of the teaming energy and life around us and underneath us.
Rail: Related to that: Could you speak about the sense of collaboration with scientists on the project? Were you talking to people who were developing other Winogradsky columns?
Yi: Yes. So I spoke with two very pivotal consultants. One is Frank Cusimano, who is a microbiologist. He really helped us and guided us. He was sort of the chef, if you will, of these columns, and he is a frequent collaborator. We worked together on the Guggenheim show in 2017. He helped with the microbial diorama there. So he is really our Winogradsky doula. [Laughter] I also consulted with a specialist and director at the Exploratorium in San Francisco. They have this very flat-paneled Winogradsky that they’ve been growing for, I don’t know, at least ten years or so. I thought that was the gold standard of this monumental Winogradsky work. And Denise King, she advised us as well.
Rail: You made an important distinction, which would be interesting to hear more about, in that this is not a scientific experiment. Despite working so closely with these experts, the work does something as an artwork that science does not do.
Yi: I think that opens up a lot of philosophical, existential areas. You know, I don’t illustrate science—what would be the point of that? That would not make for compelling art, in my opinion. You know, science is also very subjective—a neuroscientist told me that recently. The outcome may be objective, but your approach to science is purely subjective. You get to choose what you’re prioritizing, how you’re going to organize your research, what gets filtered, what doesn’t—it’s very similar to the practice and process of an artist. So there’s a lot of parallels, a lot of shared insights and practical considerations, but to me, science is also a space for interrogation. It is not something that is absolute. Science is the hypotheses that we have, and over humanity’s history, how many times have we refuted certain theories? I find that very potent, the mutability, you know?
But I think science has also become the modern era’s religion, right? I mean, it’s taken over a lot of theological preeminence. Consider the Big Bang—that’s science’s version of our origin story, which is precisely the kind of story we used to get from religion. And then the scientists are like, “Oh no, here’s where we came from,” but it’s like “Hmm, did we though?” [Laughs] So there’s a lot of rich material to work with narratively—and it’s not that I’m being disrespectful or that I’m just playing with fingerpaint around these scientific theories. I think it’s important to appreciate the interesting potential and the mutability of these ideas.
Rail: Or it’s like the mutability of knowledge, or knowing that what we understand today may not necessarily hold in the future. I’m thinking of how we shifted from a geocentric model of the planetary system to a heliocentric one. And we can build from there, right? I think one of the interesting things is how this corresponds to the scientific method, which is predicated on the idea of asking a question, having hypotheses, and then testing them. But with art, I feel like it’s about raising those questions, but it’s not about achieving an answer the way that science wants to do, or does, you know?
Yi: Well, that’s what’s so liberating, right? I can simultaneously be reading about three opposing theories around consciousness, and in that milieu there will not be any agreement. It’s like, are you in the biological camp, which states that consciousness comes from biology? Are you in the panpsychist camp? Are you in the physicalist camp? You know what I mean? I’m actually inclined to think that there are real merits to a lot of these ideas, but I don’t have to choose. It’s not about being didactic.
That’s what’s so liberating. I don’t have to prove something in order to create an experience to bring these compelling ideas forward. It’s about asking the right questions, as you said. It’s not about the answers so much, but I think that—dare I say—it can be something that’s even transcendent from that need to know the right knowledge base around these ideas that I’m drawing from. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s kind of a middle way, and art can be transcendent in that way. It can occupy a non-conceptual space, it can be pre-cognitive, pre-verbal—pre-assigning symbols that we create through language and through data. It can be something that’s much more holistic.
Rail: Kind of primordial in this case, but I think it’s also like you can hold conflicting ideas in the air, and it’s not that they’re canceling each other out or even opposing each other in that sense.
Yi: Isn’t that how life functions? All its myriad contradictions, and we’re still standing—you know, until we aren’t. [Laughter]
Rail: It’s true. Speaking of transcendence, I wanted to read a quote from you to turn some of your words back to you.
Yi: Oh dear. [Laughter]
Rail: From a recent Artforum piece, which is also about Messages from the Mud, you wrote, “Current research tells us that awe is extremely healthy for us to experience, because it not only brings us joy and a kind of peaceful experience, almost similar to meditation, but also connects us to a broader ecosystem that’s much larger than ourselves.” Reading this I’m like, “Oh, Anicka is such a romantic in that classical sense!” [Laughter]
Yi: Well, okay, um—thank you for calling me out. I read a book on awe. In fact, I was with a dear friend who’s a brilliant artist, Mel Chin, at a retreat that he hosted in North Carolina a couple of years ago, and he had the author of this book, Awe, Dacher Keltner. We were able to hear him speak about his theories and ask some questions. So then I read the book, and I realized it’s actually really healthy for you to be standing in the bowels of the Grand Canyon, where you’re feeling this Kantian sublime—it does something to your chemicals. It connects you to the bigger, broader ecosystem, the ecology, and you’re feeling that you’re part of this complex, vast system. I think that’s so important to my installation, because it is about interdependence. It is about how there is no natural phenomena that exists in isolation or autonomously, and that no phenomena can be the creation of itself. Everything is interconnected, and I feel like that’s been a consistent thesis for me in my practice from day one.
Rail: It’s this kind of entangled awe—
Yi: Yes, it allows us to feel what’s really happening in the universe. All this entanglement and quantum entanglements—it is very much top of mind for me.
Rail: If you want to take it that way: it’s also about conflicting ideas, because in a quantum model, you can be in two different states at the same time, right?
Yi: Which is phenomenal! I mean, you’re traveling in opposite directions in vast distances, and depending on the observer, a particle or a wave can appear as each other—that is absolutely astonishing, and very liberating.
Rail: And to go back to the Artforum quote: the following idea is to go beyond privileging sight. So much of your work is about going beyond the visual. Could you speak a little bit about that, and how that fits within this sensation of awe?
Yi: I’m not an ocular-centric artist; I never have been. I don’t privilege sight over other senses. Early on in my practice, I was trying to cultivate this notion of what I call the biopolitics of the senses. Even though historically we’ve evolved away from our sense of smell and taste and have really privileged and prioritized vision and sight—especially in art, which is associated and synonymous with being able to control various systems through sight, and that’s been attributed to the masculine realm. Whereas with something like smell, we’re dealing with the invisibility of scent molecules to the human eye, and that it is woefully under-researched. We don’t even have a really cogent theory that we can agree on.
It is like the key-and-lock theory, or the wave theory of how we measure and receive smell. There’s still some debate around that, and how it functions through the limbic part of the brain, which we attribute as a feminine characteristic. It’s inscrutable, it’s invisible, it’s mysterious, and we project and transfer these sort of value judgments around gender, around race, around other kinds of orientations onto the body and biology—so then it becomes highly politicized, right? And that was something I was really interested in exploring early on in my practice.
Rail: It’s shifting how you encounter or experience an artwork in that way.
Yi: Yes, and there’s so much potential. I consider smell to be so sculptural. You can deal with so much volume, and the air is a very potent material for sculpting—very charged. Especially during the recent pandemic, I mean, it was very palpable. I think people became a lot more conscientious about the air that is around them, and how the air always contains risk, and even though we don’t see it, it is there. It brings up notions of different kinds of quality of air, and who gets to breathe the good air. So you’re dealing with a lot of socio-economic questions. This is not an accident; these are constructed. Even the air can be so charged politically.
Rail: It can carry contagion, but it also can carry perfume. So, there’s danger and beauty—
Yi: But also, speaking of deep time, these scent molecules never really go away. So we are still ingesting the scent molecules from Joan of Arc’s fiery pyre, you know? The notion of “fresh air” kind of tickles me, because these swirling molecules are always ever-present. I mean, talk about the collision of timescales, and this melding and metabolizing through these molecules. It really supports the idea of interdependence—of interconnection as well as the lack of autonomy.
Rail: Right. When we smell, these molecules are literally entering our bodies. It’s not like sight, where we’re just looking at light bouncing off the surface of something.
Yi: No, and in that sense, I’ve always found that for my work and other work—what I call metabolic art—you have to be an active participant in order to experience it. You can’t be a passive viewer and just say, “Okay, there’s the painting,” and I’m here, six feet away. The work inoculates you, and I think that’s a good metaphor to think about art in general. It’s a form of inoculation, right? It’s a cultural, political, social inoculation. It’s a spatial inoculation, and when you ingest these molecules into your body, is it voluntary? Not necessarily. So you’re being inoculated, and therefore you become a participant in this experience. You cannot be a passive, disinterested viewer.