2015+Inès+C

Research Proposal

**Describe your research question (as it stands now) and the reasons behind your choice:**

‘//To what extent are the land art and installation works of artists constrained by physical, structural and material properties of the media they are working with.’//

I am interested in both civil engineering and visual art; the two have combined together in the past to make the most aesthetically stunning and remarkably constructed buildings and bridges. I therefore decided to focus on an artist I have access to, but explore the process of production; the limitations and possibilities presented by tangible media.

**What research have you undertaken so far?(this should include //relevant// exhibitions, galleries and museums that you have visited at first hand in the last 18 months)**

J-stor articles:
 * Christo: On Art, Education, and the Running Fence
 * Christo’s Umbrellas: Visual Art/Performance/Ritual/Real Life on a Grand Scale
 * A Beginner’s Guide to Public Art
 * The Wrapped Reichstag: From Political Symbol to Artistic Spectacle
 * Kant and the Christo Effect: Grounding Aesthetics

Internet sources:
 * Lake iseo project drawing & info
 * [|http://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-floating-piers#.VYWamUYyMXg]
 * [|http://christojeanneclaude.net/projects/the-floating-piers?view=info#.VYWazEYyMXg]
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 * Presentation at Maxxi
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 * Christo works in Tate modern (london museum)
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 * [] __What research are you planning to undertake during the summer? (this should include //relevant// exhibitions, galleries and museums that you plan to visit first hand between now and September)__


 * The wrapping of the Aurelian walls (mention this in interview)
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 * projects for Rome
 * [|http://www.christojeanneclaude.net/projects/projects-with-barrels?view=slides#.VYWcqUYyMXi]


 * GNAM (roma)
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 * Website
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 * blog
 * [|http://christojeanneclaude.net/blog#.VYWab0YyMXg]

**What other //SPECIFIC// research sources will you attempt to investigate between now and September (for example interviews with specific artists, critics, curators and other relevant people)**

> > Dear Mr Christo//,// > Below is a short description explaining the origins of my essay and why my specific focus is on your work. > > The Extended Essay needs to be based on a specific topic of interest within one of the subjects you study during the International Baccalaureate (IB). When choosing this subject I was indecisive whether to choose Physics or Visual Arts; my interests lie in both the application of mathematics and physics to engineering, as well as the stages of design and creation of large scale art projects. Due to the fine line between these two subjects, I chose Visual Arts as my subject for this essay, but decided to take a critical approach by delving into the engineering aspect of a particular project. The project I would like to focus on is your upcoming one on Lake Iseo. > > To me, the beauty of a project does not only depend on the final aesthetic appearance. Rather, it stems from the creative evolution of initial concepts, and the different paths a project takes after overcoming obstacles. For example, the greatest challenge for Vincent Van Gogh was his lack of financial assets which meant he had to paint tomatoes in shades of brown because the rusty tin oxide pigment was cheaper than bright reds. When working on larger scale projects, the challenges can then become wind speeds, ocean currents and the environmental impact of the materials used. > > The current title of my extended essay is therefore: ‘//To what extent are the land art and installation works of artists constrained by physical, structural and material properties of the media they are working with.’// > > A point I plan to highlight throughout the essay is that the perception of a person viewing the finalised project is merely that - a perception. To me the beauty of a project stems from the creative evolution of concepts and the paths a project takes after facing these previously mentioned obstacles. > > I would very much appreciate it if you could give me a moment of your time to answer a few questions I have written, either through a phone conversation or via E-mail. > > Looking forward to your reply, > > Thank you very much, > > Kind Regards, > > Inès Chessa > >
 * Initial contact through nephew Vladimir:
 * Skype interview with Christo
 * Interview questions:
 * What problems do you face in the transition between conceptual sketches and the physical realisation of a large scale environmental project?
 * How have developments in modern materials and advances in technology influenced the possibilities within your work?
 * To what extent do you work with engineers?
 * Is there a point at which your work/practice moves from that of an artist to that of an engineer or architect?

**What research are you planning to undertake during the summer?**

I wanted to go visit Tate modern but only spent one day in London…

**From the research that you have carried out so far, what is your loose hypothesis/answer to your research question? Explain how you have arrived at this idea and how this might change (including evidence of an opposing viewpoint)**

Material properties artists have had to work with have influenced their work, especially in Christo’s case as the scale of his work is large - materials are going to be the deciding factor in deciding whether an installation is going to work. However, artists can fix problems if they are constrained by the materials they are working with by using supporting materials - however this might damage the aesthetic of it.

Christo Interview Transcript

**//What problems do you face in the transition between conceptual sketches and the physical realisation of a large scale environmental project?//**

You should understand that all the projects we do in urban spaces, somewhere in the city, like the G//ates of central park//, or the //Pont Neuf// in Paris, or //Berlin Reichstag//, they are all urban projects. Some of the projects are in the country side, they are rural projects like the //Running Fence// in Northern California, the //Umbrellas// in Japan and California, the Valley curtain, or over the river - the new project we are working on.

All the ideas are our ideas; we don’t do any commission on anything, and of course all the ideas are original; they are very precise to recognise that their location, like the gates were designed for central park, we knew the location, we also knew it for the Reichstag. But then sometimes we have an idea and we would like to find the location. For example, we had the idea to hang a curtain between two mountain slots and we need to find a valley in Colorado for that project. The same thing goes for //running fence// in northern California- the 14km fence running to the land and disappearing in the pacific ocean, and the //Umbrellas//. Now, the floating peer project is exactly the same thing; we had the idea and wanted to find the location. So you understand, this shows that they are not conceptual things, they are precise things. They are related.

In the last 50 years Jeanne Claude and myself realised 22 projects and we failed to get permission for 37 projects. Some of the projects were refused, and we don't like to do it anymore. Some of the projects were refused and we try once, twice, three times etc. The Berlin project was refused 3 times but finally we did it. The gates were also refused once, and the Paris project which was refused twice. And of course the floating peer is also a project in these 37 not realised projects. In 1971 we tried to do a much smaller sized floating peer in the Delta of Rio Della Plat in Argentina - we never got permission. In 1996-1997 we tried to do smaller floating peer of about 100 meters long, to two man made islands and Tokyo Bay in Japan, we didn’t get the permission. Jeanne Claude and I loved that idea, this is why finally we got permission for Lake Iseo.

All our projects are conceptual drawings made in my studio. I have lived in that building in Manhattan for 50 years, it is a 19th century industrial building. The top floor is my studio which is where I put the vision on paper - sometimes it is my vision, sometimes it’s Jeanne Claude’s vision. Surrounding 11 islands with pink fabric in Florida was Jeanne Claude’s vision. Now, for all these projects we need to go through many processes. The first process is to make the visuals; the drawings, the sketches, the collages of how the project will look. I make drawings, I use photography, I make collages with simple fabrics. But as this project is real and physical, and they are very very large and very very big, you cannot choose the right colour, the right proportion, the right elements of the project inside the studio. Meaning that for //all// our projects we do live sized tests in secret places. We cannot build the whole project because its too big, very complicated, and we need to get permission. Therefore in a private place, secretly, we can do several life-sized tests; one-to-one scale - but only 1% of the project. We do these tests for all our big projects.

When we finally got the chance to get the permission for the //Floating Peer// in the summer of last year, we had to move the project technically, very fast - we were very short on time and needed to find a little lake where we could do a life-sized test. The floating peers are 16 meters wide, but of course one of them is 1km long. We don't need 1km [for the test], we can make them 60 meter wide by 20 meter while still using the real proportion and the real cubes, the real mechanics, the real thing. We found a friend who has a big private estate in the Northern part of Germany, where they have a little lake where we could secretly perform the test without needing permission from the government or any agency. We used exactly the same cubes made out of high density polyethylene - which already exist in the market for the marina. For our project we bought 200200 cubes from a company who fabricate these cubes for the marina, and of course we put them together to create a surface of 60 meter wide and 20 meter long. We have our skilled specialist fabric makers and cloth makers in Germany to prepare a variation of type evolving fabricsin all colours. Because of all these different things we did a life sized test in September of 2014.

The life-sized test was basically an indication to see whether we could do the project the way we were thinking - using these 50 by 50-40 centimetre high specially fabricated cubes secured by a thousand giant screws. We knew that that technique had already been used in 15 years - it did not exist in the 70s when the floating peer was done with a normal floating platoon,with a wooden floor, and of course a fabric that floats and you walk on the fabric. Part of the development of these variety of services is through the introduction of plastic materials.The test we did in September was only for the aesthetics; to see which fabric was best, how the fabric moved on the floating peer, whether the 60 meter wide central section of 10 meters was large enough that the 3 meters on each side gradually became like a beach to the height of the water. The test is complete after seeing that the materials are workable and seeing exactly what fabric I would like to use, and how it should be woven.Another special thing about the project is that the entire project will be done by divers. We need to do the project in a very unusual way, to install all these hundreds of components.

For all our projects we do exactly the same thing. Basically, the process starts from the drawings (the small sketches), moving into working to find the right people. We should understand that all the projects you see, they are not very complicated projects; they are not engineering wonders - they are very mechanical, very simple - they are done with the fingers. They are not at all wonders like electronics; they are real and they need to be done in a very simple way. If you are an engineer that is the most difficult part because most of the work that is done by engineers is done in a very complicated way, and this is why for all our projects in the last 50 years we need to find engineers that advice us who think very intelligently. This is the reason we do not have one engineer, we need to have many different opinions to give input. The people who usually give the best input are very practical. Now you should understand that many of our big projects are made out of fabric, for example for many years, this is very odd, one of the most important advisors principally for engineering, is a professor in Harvard university, who was actually a professor specialised in the tall ships with the big sails. He is a very astute and intelligent man who knows how to deal with moving materials like cloth and moving all these elements, whereas a normal engineer constructs skyscrapers and bridges. This is why for all our projects we do not only have one advisor, we have many because in the end the entire project is done with your finger - you need to pull the fabric, you need to secure the fabric, there are no electronic devices or any of these things it is very much like walking in the mountains, or climbing in the mountains, or sailing a boat or moving things with your finger; its very physical.

Often we use the word ‘soft-ware’ when the project only exists as drawings and diagrams because we never do the same things again - we never, never do the same things again. Basically, one experience, one project is always worthless for the next project because it is a completely different thing. We never did //Floating Peer,// it is the first time we do it. And of course in the discovery process we do research to find the most simple way to do the project. For example, when we were discussing with the Italian engineers for //Floating Peer//, they were discussing like normal engineers. For example from the shipyard from the river we would like to fabricate about 360 cement bases, and we were discussing with your father, we can use that area to bring the cement truck to bring the bases there and use the Montisola headquarters. Now, the Italian engineers said ‘yeah but how do we move these bases’, - each bases weighs about 5 to 7 tones, they are made of cement in the area of the river and then dropped in the shallow water of the river. And of course usually the people who do these things they take the cement bases and transport them to the sides. Do you know how these 7 tone bases will be transported? They will be transported by the most intelligent things. With water the most important thing is air; air and water are two things that totally oppose each other. These bases will be transported in huge industrial balloons with a diameter of 4 meters, and can carry 20 tones of weight in the water. Basically, the anchor will be in the water, these balloons will be attached to the anchor, and we inflate an entire balloon and float the anchors on Lake Iseo. Meaning that you don't need any complications with cranes moving around as the balloons will be floating like sugar cubes on Lake Iseo. Now all this is not invented by our engineers, it is something very common in the exploration in the oil fields. You know, much of the oil field exploration in the oceans are done by combining air in water. All these types of things are very simple and a normal structural engineer who builds bridges and houses has no idea about that.

This is the entire way of how the project will be installed. The same way finding the underground location of these anchors, sometimes its 50 or 20 meter depth will be done by professional divers - they are not amateur sports man - they do exactly that diving job to do things like that.To give you an idea for each project, as for the floating peer project, we need to have our own team of people who think very cleverly and very simple, and of course economically less expensive.That is not something that we know how to do - we need to discover and find it. In the same way there are many of these ideas that need to be done, for example the Italian authority and Italian engineers who are very good never do things like that, they would like to see if a life sized test can be done. This is why in October of last year we showed them another test using the 20 meters by 60 meter wide cubes, balloons and anchors. Again it was difficult to get permission to do it in Italy and things like that. Fortunately Vladimir my nephew, probably your father knows him very well, he is Bulgarian and has a little summer house near the turkish boarder of Bulgaria near the black sea, and in February we shipped these 200200, 60 meter by 20 meter cubes from Germany to the black sea in Bulgaria, and there we performed to the Italian engineers and the officials of the government how the anchors with the balloons can be put. All that was done in February of this year. You should understand that all that was done and no body knew about that to make sure there was no press and no people can who knew about it. This was done with this project like all other projects.

**//How have developments in modern materials and advances in technology influenced the possibilities within your work?//**

Of course. Everything is very much related to the simple things, but they are not very essential of course… You should know that for all our outdoor projects, starting with the fabric: we cannot use natural fibres because they are not strong or resistant enough- this is why all our cloth, fibre, fabric, all our cloth for our projects like the valley curtain, the river, surrounded island, Reichstag, it is all industrial textile. Industrial textile it totally different to the clothing textile; all the industrial textile fibre comes from the oil or petrochemical industry, they can be polypropylene, polyethylene, nylon, all different kinds. For each project we need to find a classic material which is more workable for the project we would like to have. For example, for //Surrounded Island//, the project we did in 1983, we used the biggest amount of fabric for all our projects actually, 650,000m^2 of fabric for surrounded island - big islands in Florida. We needed to have a floatable fabric. Now, the only artificial fibre which floats is polypropylene. The density of the water is 1 and the density of polypropylene is 0.8 - just below the density of the water. Now, that was not sufficient for our project. All the important issues with the woven and extruded fibre was done in Germany. Our german engineers decided that they would put millions ofmicroscopical protons of air in the soup where the fibre was extruded and of course that gave the buoyancy of the fibre. The density of our fibre was then 0.48 - which means it floated.

As the project was in southern Florida, in the spring time in the month of may, there was another delicate problem. Before the hurricane which comes at the late end of the season, the sun is very strong- the UV of the sun is very strong, which can bleach the colour pink very fast - in one day it can become white. A german engineer needed to secure the pink colour, and the pink colour comes from red and red comes from iron, and when you put in more iron it makes it makes the cloth very heavy. So it was very delicate and they worked very hard to adjust the iron proportion and the soup of polypropylene that was extruded to give this very saturated pink colour for fourteen days. All that was done because there were the engineers, the chemical people who were willing to go through that effort even for such a small order because it was very small, 650,000m^2 for a big company is very little, but the german engineers were very eager to do that.

We need to find people to do all these things and of course the invention and use of the petrochemical industry is a big revolution for technology in the last 100 years more and more. All our outdoor, mostly environmental projects use the petrochemical industry because the industry exists not for the clothing but mostly for the industrial project. For example, in 1969 we did a project called //Wrapped Coastline// in Australia, near Sydney, where we wrapped the 2.5 miles of the coastline with the special polypropylene fabric which is fabricated in the south pacific area for the farmers. You know in this area in Australia and Indonesia they have very big storms, typhoons, hurricanes, cyclones which come and remove all the surface of good earth in the farmers farm. This is why the farmers often use that woven polypropylene to put over the good earth. They throw the seeds which can go through the polypropylene, that when the wind comes it cannot remove the good earth- this is called erosion control mesh. That erosion control mesh is exactly fabricated for that purpose and this one we did, we bought the fabric for the wrapped coast in Australia, was the woven polypropylene especially for the farmers, and in one big story because this is also benefit because is not for the coating for the huge proportions, the fabric was woven and very large wheat near five and a half to six meters wide. Usually the normal fabric is not more than one and a half to two meters wide, whereas this is six meter wide fabric - made with a very special machine. So yes, we have benefits from the inventions in industry today but they are not done for us, they are done basically for many many people in every day life.

**//To what extent do you work with engineers?//**

You know, we work with many people; lawyers, engineers, politicians and advisors, we work with many people; all our projects are collective projects - they cannot be done by one person - they are done by many different people. The most difficult part is to put together the groups of the right people. Sometimes we have the wrong people and we need to find them, sometimes we are on a totally different track and we need to change because the project cannot be done in that way. All the projects Jeanne Claude and myself develop, they are not impossible projects - they are not something that cannot be done. They are manageable, they are very mechanical, they are strange, but they are not impossible projects - they can be done with the clever thinking that we put together. That is probably the most difficult part; to find very willingly people to be engaged with that adventure and who can take a risk and there is a lot of amusement and a lot of pleasure and good dynamics. This is why we do the projects, because they are all unique projects.

An example of typical engineering: when we tried to wrap the Reichstag, like you see in Milano or any city in Italy, when they are building buildings they build scaffolding, even when they try to restore buildings they put scaffolding so that the workers work between the scaffolding and the building. So of course the German construction people said ‘to wrap a huge building, we scaffold all the Reichstag and we install the parts, the steel, the ropes, the fabric and when all that is wrapped we remove the scaffolding.’ Forget it! We will never do that project again. ‘Well how can we do that project?!’ they asked me. You will do the project with rock climbers! These are rock climbers who clim mountains, who go to repair windmills and old churches. So the entire Reichstag project, you can see photographs, was done by a fabulous team of rock climbers. Everybody watching how they do the things like that was much more exciting to see; the fabric was then rolled by rock climbers, the ropes were put in place by rock climbers. And there were many of them - about 60. Of course that is also the very beautiful part of the project. Physically the project was all installed in less than a week in front of everybody watching. This is how this project showed that clever use of activity.

It was not the first time we used rock climbers, you should know that in 1969 when we were wrapping the coastline in Australia, some of the cliffs there was 50 meter high, and they came down to pacific ocean where there are sharks and so there was no way to do scaffolding, so we need to rock climbers to secure the fabric and tie the ropes. It is something so obvious but you don’t often make the connection of how to do it.

**//Is there a point at which your work/practice moves from that of an artist to that of an engineer or architect?//**

I am not an engineer or architect. I love architecture; I love to see the marvellous bridges, but I am not an engineer. I really do not. I cannot. We work with many engineers, but I am not capable to… I try to use my common sense to understand. This is very helpful to make things very simple and I tell you that at the begin the most difficult part for any engineer is to do it very simple - fortunately we always try to find the right engineer.

I have another little story to tell you. When we were still working on another big project in Abudabi we were working with about 400,000 oil barrels. It was a huge project - it was bigger than the pyramid ofGizain Egypt. Basically, the structure had two vertical walls, two slanted walls and a trunked top. That huge structure which was 150 meters high, and 300 meter vertical wall, you should see it on our website, 225 meter is covered with this 410,000 oil barrels in the right position and exact place- there is no pattern. In 1979 I made a scale model and I pinpointed each barrel; each wall had about 110,000 oil barrels with 10 different colours and they are all whimsically arranged; there are no patterns and it is very complicated to install them. Jeanne Claude, before she passed away, she was aware that it was a very complex job. This is why she was so clever to say ‘I have an idea’. Tell that to your father also that would be amusing. You know that there is a huge book of the greatest engineering school in the world is called Shanghai college- don’t ask me why is called like that - where they classify the 500 best engineering universities of the world from 1 to 500. They are professors, assistants laboratory everything and we had services of the four greatest engineering university schools around the world. One was the university of Illinois, United states, one the services of **University of Institute of technology,** Switzerland, Zurich, one of the services of the university of Cambridge, United Kingdom, and of course one of the university in Tokyo, Japan.

The professors and assistants got the drawing and the proportion of the project. They knew that they needed to install 410,000 barrels, rolls royce barrels, made specially with all these colours, and a huge huge structure - enormously high structure. This team did not know each other; we payed them to come with an exact explanation of how to do the project. So we bought these service and they came here to New York and to Japan and Switzerland and we have these 4 very complex, very professional studies. Myself and Jeanne Claude we are not engineers but we have a friend who is a very famous engineer, professor of university of Berlin, Professor Schlig, who avocado us what concept was the most exciting and most beautiful. And he advised us that the concept of professor Zazachi from Husei university in Tokyo was the most innovative and most unique.

Basically, professor Zazachi was very clever as he said that to install this 410,000 identical things in the right place will be very tedious, very boring, if we build cement structure or a steel structure and we have workers who put bricks in the wall- we would take years. This is why he suggested that we should flattening the project. Meaning that - you should go to our website you will see what I am talking about - when you flatten the geometry of that project, that project will have 2 trapezium vertical walls, which become flat on the ground. You have 3 rectangular walls, two identical slanted walls and the roof is another rectangular wall. When they are flattened you can totally flatten the ground, and that way Professor Zazachi said all the workers will install these barrels very much like installing the Roman mosaic on the floor. You can literally walk on the floor and install the barrels while walking on the floor. Of course, that structure is not laying on the floor, that structure already has a steel frame structure but it is completely horizontal siting on hundreds of railroad tracks. That structure is 35 meters tall but horizontal on the ground and when all these barrels are installed in the right position, the entire project will be elevated in less than 10 days and all become hard. On the website there is a little film to tell you how the things went up. I think is there but Jonathan try to check it.

Again all this project was done because Jeanne Claude had great idea to address the problems to the different engineers and professors around the world and Professor Zazachi came up with that very unusual unique idea to install the project. and this is how the project will be built and this is why we all the time we need to have engineers.

Now the question ‘move from artist to engineer’ no no. I am always the artist. For example you should know that I do not know how to drive, I have no driving license, I do not like to talk on the telephone, I do not know how to use the computer, I do not know how to open the computer, I don’t know any of that. I like to have the real things, only real things. I don’t care about visual reality, only the real things. This is why of course i am not an engineer, I am not an architect, I am an artist. You should understand that there are big differences between art and architecture. You know mostly architecture is done to make the lives of people easier or better; to work better, to live better, to have warm houses, to have elevators, to move in the city better. Art, a work of art, has nothing to do with that. A work of art has nothing to do with making you better. A work of art is absolutely irrational- totally useless - no body needs this project you know. This is why the work of art have the dimension of freedom that no other profession has- like poetry, like the sonata of mozart- it is not anything except nice to listen to. There is no rational thinking in art and in architecture there is rational thinking. You need to make the people live better, be efficient, move in the building better, have more air. All these things they are not related to art. Ok?

(4,492 words!)