BCL (Shiho Fukuhara & Georg Tremmel

In between Tokyo and London

June 2010

A dialogue with Verina Gfader, also the retconned BCL meets … Nullnummer.

50 plus 3 questions for BCL is a dialogue between BCL and Verina Gfader conducted via a shared online document in June 2010. Discussing the underlying codes and strategies of the work Common Flowers / Flower Commons, 2008-, the dialogue forms the base for the essay Imaginary Agents — Flowers and the Common (in Russegger, G., Tarasiewicz, M. and Wlodkowski, M. (eds) Coded Cultures. New Creative Practices out of Diversity. Springer Wien/New York Edition Angewandte 2011). As a parallel investigation to the theoretical elaboration, this more informal exchange of thoughts pushes the artists’ ideas further into an improvised process of gathering data about their activities and everyday. Subjects of 50 plus 3 questions for BCL include issues of bio-hacking, the common, DIY flowers, tactical practices, societal plants, instructions for actions and Tokyo sites.

1 What is the common?

General, free, open, public. Belonging to all, the opposite of special. Shared by all or many. There are two connotations of it, the first one is exemplified in the reversal of the project name from Common Flowers to Flower Commons, specifying these shared places and spaces where the flowers might grow. Translated to German, ‘common’ becomes ‘gemein’, which, again, has two distinct meanings; the obvious one such as the noun ‘Gemeinde’ (community, village) or ‘ever-present, ordinary’, especially in often occurring plants and animals. (The original Latin word would be ‘vulgaris’). The other nuance is that the adjective ‘gemein’ also means ‘mean’. Whether genetically modified flowers really are mean, is not for us to decide.

2 In what way is the reversal of the process important to you? You previously mentioned that with Common Flowers you reverse the plant process.

When flowers are cut, a slow death of the flower starts. We want to reverse this decision and bring the plant back to live using plant tissue culture. For flowers death is not the end but the start of a new beginning.

3 Why flowers, why roses?

Flowers, and especially Suntory Flowers ranges of genetically modified blue carnations and roses, represent the first genetically modified consumer products, which are neither human food or animal feed but serve a purely aesthetic purpose. That’s why they are special, that’s why they have to become common.

4 Is this a Japan–influenced project, and in what way?

When we came to Japan for a residency at IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences and International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Ogaki), we did a lot of research for the project Biopresence (http://www.biopresence.com/) and attended various bio-industry events in Japan. At one of those events we came across the yet-to-be-introduced blue carnations, they are branded ‘Moondust’ by Suntory Flowers, a subsidiary of the Japanese beer brewing company Suntory. It was not clear that this early encounter would lead to Common Flowers. We actually chatted a bit with the representatives of Suntory and they were not against the idea of promoting their product through art and/or design. Indeed others did some sort of flower arrangements, yet others made a tube-shaped display case for the flowers. But these attempts did not touch the most interesting and most relevant point of the flowers.

5 A project funded by Suntory?

The opposite is true. We are funding Suntory by being a very good customer.

6 What was the negotiation when working with them?

As we did not show the project in Japan yet, my guess would be that they are blissfully unaware of the project. Looking forward to receiving their response.

7 What does (bio-)hacking mean, imply — in particular in or for your practice?

Hacking has to be effortlessly elegant. A small gesture with a big outcome. With bio-hacking in particular, we mean the attempt to regain power over our shared biological destiny. We need to get involved, we need to understand, we need to learn. Not only we as artists but we as a society.

7a Can one hack everything? Any system?

In principle it should be possible to hack any system that can be sufficiently well described. The hacking in this project is evident on two levels. On the bio-technical, tissue culture level: we are trying to understand the system ‘blue flower’ and change it’s appearance. On the media communication level: we are trying our DIY flowers as a counter-model to the commercially available ones with the explicit plan of provoking responses.

8 Is there a moment of agency in the project?

It seems we are being cast as the devil’s advocate by promoting the spread of GMOs. But the spreading is already done by Suntory, we are only the messengers.

9 How do you work as a team — dialogical processes in your practice?

Yes, exactly. Dialogical processes, polylogical textures.

More about the

10 What is your everyday?

Thanks to our latest project we are keeping very busy.

11 You explore blue flowers, do you look into colour theory?

Have to admit, not very much. We are aware that blue stands for something unobtainable and the blue rose especially seems to have a romantic connotation of unreachable love. What other meanings from colour theory would apply to flowers which were white, then became blue, and then became white again? Schizophrenic?

12 To what degree do you think you are influenced and affected by your art education?

-273.15

13 Sharing resources and transparency of work processes, is this an issue for you?

In the work Common Flowers / Flowers Common it is an issue, because it’s part of the work. We want to show that if we as artists without a bio-science background can do this, then everybody can. We want to learn, we want to help others to learn. We want to know, we want others to know.

14 Are you attracted to ideas of activism and interventional strategies?

We are attracted to actionism in the sense of the Wiener Gruppe.

14a Can you perhaps define a little bit how actionism is manifest in or with the Wiener Gruppe?
The group (involving artists, poets, writers like H.C. Artmann and Gerhard Rühm, but also writer and theoretician Oswald Wiener known for his work on cybernetics) has been categorised as a precursor of the Vienna Actionists and as one of the most radical modern/postmodern movements in Europe. Their work and actions derive from language, visual poetry and mass media. How do you see a link there to your activities, thinking, making?

Being educated in Vienna it was impossible to ignore the Wiener Gruppe. What impressed me, next to their playfulness with language and their trans-disciplinary approach, was their media hacking. Clearly it was not called media hacking but clearly it can be described as such. We’d be honored if our project Common Flowers / White Out can be linked to that tradition.

15 Or do you think activism is somehow an outdated concept?

Activism implies a morally benevolent agenda.

16 Are you aware of the Situationsts’ détournement?

Our practice can only be tactical.

17 Your home in Tokyo… do demographics shape your work and methodologies? I am interested in what way living and working in certain locations or territories, that mark a certain characteristic of human population, influence a cultural practice. (The influence can happen on any level.) For example, if your daily routes are mostly in financial districts or if your daily routes involve a boat trip, these environments and movements affect one, certain sensibilities. The question is I think relevant particularly now, when districts move so fast, when people constantly migrate and re-migrate, there are micro-movements and macro-movements. I wonder how this constant readjustment of demographics might be embedded in your practice or not at all.

We were used to move a lot in the past, maybe that influenced our practice in such a way that we mainly made physically small or digital works, which travel easily. But since we’re settled in Tokyo, a city with a strange mixture of homogeneous-ness and multiculture, topological difference became not so much a big deal for us. Our plans for future projects became more large scale, more permanent. Maybe that’s a direct result of the environment.

18 What area are you living in?

In the South West part of Tokyo, near the Komazawa Olympic Park. Lots of trees, lots of flowers. Some might be blue.

19 How is the neighbourhood?

Quite nice. Not bad for cheap food as there are a couple of universities and therefore many students around. Komazawa Park is also one of the biggest parks in Tokyo. It affects the air quality, it’s nice to have an open sky, and sometimes, in the early mornings, you can even catch a glimpse of Mount Fuji.

20 Do you think the hacked or second flower is already embedded in the former, the first flower?

Basically Suntory hacked the flower, we are only showing ways of re-taking ownership of it.

21 Is your work a microscopic view or procedure (using fragile materialities, tissue, certain tools)?

It is very much DIY biotechnology, which may sound scary but is nothing more than following protocols. Cleanliness if your friend, dirt creates nicely-coloured – but harmless – moulds.

22 Is drawing part of your practice?

It was, maybe it will be again.

23 How do you consider non-organic and organic matter in relation to your work?

Organic is quite an ambivalent word. The main connotation (at least in Europe) is that of organic food, basically meaning food free of herbicides and pesticides; if you speak of organic matter means something along the way of being produced by an organism. My favourite meaning is the quite obvious connection to organs.
The relation between non-organic and organic matter becomes important, if they carry subtexts and meaning. For example, with our Biopresence project the human DNA is embedded in the tree’s DNA and therefore something human can be found within the tree. It might not be that important in Common Flowers / White Out, but it is very essential to other projects.

24 Is your work performance?

Giving public demonstrations of How-to-clone-your-favourite-genetically-modified flower is.

25 What is your preferred day/night time of working?

After 24.30h, but before 27.30h. Yes, one should really be in bed by 27.30h.

26 Are you disrupted by travelling duties?

No, it’s fine.

27 Do you include elements of migration, the migrational in your work?

Not intentionally, but if you will this work is about the creation of shared spaces, of common grounds. Maybe we want to anchor our works, but not so much ourselves.

28 Does travelling contribute to your work, and if yes, in what way?

Of course it’s nice to travel, to meet old and new friends, to explore new sceneries. It refreshes, it forces one to rethink one’s position. As such it might contribute indirectly to our works.

29 Limits in your practice?

Unfortunately limited by our knowledge. But we do our best not to be constrained by that.

30 Does your work tend towards something utopian, dystopian, heterotopian?

It might appear like that, doesn’t it? But we try to ground our projects firmly in the here and now.

31 Why do you choose particular ways of distributing your work, e.g. flickr?

These are just pictures of our work, no particular reason except convenience.

32 Are your actions and decisions thereby distributed?

We aim to distribute instructions for actions. Or, to put it another way, we want that people can replicate the work. I would consider the work only finished, if it gets a dynamic on it’s own.

What states of mind are intrinsic to your making?

33 Boredom?

7.1%

34 Cooking?

3.41%

35 Reading?

11.78%

36 Dissecting?

0.47%

Sampling?

9.02%

38 Re- de- sampling?

17.91%

39 Noise?

23.6%

40 None of these?

26.71%

41 Can you deal with lots of questions?

Yes. No. Maybe.

42 Is a main aim integral to your practice to reconfigure the biological or is biology one of many resources you can work with?

Biology is more of a resource or, more broadly, an area of interest. What is especially interesting is not so much the technology itself, but the effects (and affects) it might have on society.

43 What is secondary in your work?

Technology.

44 Which common or park or land is closest to your house?

Actually not sure if the word for ‘commons’ has the same multi-faced meaning in Japanese. And not sure if the concept of ‘commons’ exists in Japan.

45 How do you use the knowledge (space) you gained through your artwork?

Hmm. Of course we are trying to communicate the knowledge we acquire through our artworks. Ideally it can serve as an interface for next projects, not necessarily only for us, but hopefully also for others.

46 Can you describe in what way ‘time’ plays a role in your work and methodologies?

Hmm. Our works seems to have a tendency to be a long-term project. That’s probably one of the challenges that has to be faced when making bio-related projects. Life takes time.

47 Your preferred code/coding?

It’s fun to decipher codes, may they be technological, cultural or technical. Coding is active participation.

48 Do you have a garden?

Like everything else in Japan, it’s nice, small and cute.

49 Does the weather influence you? And temperature?

Only in the summer. And only when it does not rain. And only when it’s super-humid and the air conditioner has broken down. But it seems we are slowly adapting.

50 Is the exhibition an important state for this engagement with Common Flowers / Flower Commons?

Exhibitions can serve as a contact point for the work. Especially when visitors can take some tissue-cultured flowers home and start growing the blue flowers themselves.

51 Do you think that bio art is a significant art movement? Does it have a duration?

No sure whether if it’s significant, that will be decided in retrospect by future historians. Not sure whether it’s an art movement at all. If it is, it is a very fragmented, splintered one, held together by the common denominator of using biological aspects.
As for the duration, it depends. While previous art movements like Video Art and Net Art came into existence with the wider availability of new communication technologies, bio art lacks that kind of media technological catalyst. But that’s probably a good thing, so it does fade into oblivion with its technology. It also depends on its ability to attract new talent and from what I have seen recently, it looks as if it’s going to stay on for a while.

52 Is bio art a statement, thinking process, way of living, politics, a social dynamic?
Is bio-technology a statement, thinking process, way of living, politics, a social dynamic?

Bio art: Statement? Yes. Thinking process? Yes. Way of Living? No. Politics? Yes. Social Dynamic? Maybe.
Bio-technology: Statement? No. Thinking process? No. Way of Living? No. Politics? Yes. Social Dynamic? Maybe.

Bio art at its best can be seen as blue-sky research, something that could potentially be interesting to both artists and scientists, something that could potentially be valuable to both artists and scientists.
Bio-technology is a bit like programming; it’s nice to get things done and be able to do things, but once you understand the principles behind the technology, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Maybe this finding-out-how-it’s-done is the most important aspect of it. If you want to do magic, you need to know how the magic works.

If you translate bio art to German it becomes ‘Lebenskunst’ and the bio artist becomes the ‘Lebenskünstler’. Which is somehow fitting, as there are quite a few ‘Lebenskünstler’ among the bio-artists.

53 Defining the biological, is that possible or important?

Defining the biological might be possible, but not sure if this would give any insights. Because very soon you would have to define life, and although there are many reductionist explanations of life it is not possible to define all its aspects. So, no, it’s not important. What is important is the no man’s land, between life and non-life. That’s where our interest as artists is.