Everything is Relative to Abbi Allan

Abbi Allan spends a lot of time thinking about… Time.

The Minneapolis sculptor, historian and biologist recently completed an exhaustively detailed exhibition at Vine Arts Center that explores how our time on this planet has radically effected time for species that have existed long before our time.  In this interview, Allan spoke with fiveXfive about her decades-long research into why our quest for scientific design struggles with emotional connection with nature’s design.

fiveXfive: You’ve been planning this exhibit for an amazing amount of time. But maybe that’s also the point… ?

Allan: Or the greatest irony! I’ve been working on this topic for over 20 years and this specific show for the last year and a half. The show is about time and how long different species have survived in comparison to humanity. Then it compares how our actions over a relativity short period of time are affecting much of these resilient other life forms. I’d done the math yet still underestimated the amount of time this would take! I owe a lot of last minute saving grace heroes that helped me in the final days, hours and minutes before the opening, but I think that also illustrates the point too. We “understand” the numbers, but really feeling what that data implies is something we struggle with. Emotionally “I felt the data”. It is why I wanted to make this show. Yet, the act of making, displaying and seeing it; I am not only emotionally connected to this information but driven by it. Each thumbprint tile represents 1 million years. Making 4550 of them didn’t sound like a lot until you do it and then see it all together. I wonder if math and science were taught in a more visual and contextual sense, if we would feel a greater connection to the concepts they represent? These days, $4550.00 can be spent almost effortlessly and rarely do we even see money any more. It’s a number in a statement and not tangible. The less we see it, the more we devalue what those numbers represent. For me personally, making that number relative to time, labor and our biological history; I had to respect it! I feel not enough people are respected for the work they do over time. Then compare that to life and evolution on earth and that is even less so.

fiveXfive: So… It’s all relative?

Allan: Definitely! The Great Barrier Reef evolved 20 Million years ago, but since the 1980’s we’ve had a few events that have created massive die-offs due to the effects of human activity. It is calculated that this massive structure created over millions of years by these tiny communities will be destroyed in the next 20. That means it takes humanity 1 year to kill off 500,000 years of work of several species all working together to build a structure that we can see from space. Add an ice age and other ‘disasters’ they survived, but still the rate of change that we are causing is something that they can’t combat. It’s not just devastating, it is actually kind of rude. It’s the ultimate kicking down another kid’s block tower.

fiveXfive: The ceramic work looks amazingly like coral… coral that starts to turn white when it dies on the reefs. It’s one of those species that are being “blanched out of existence” as you say.

Allan: Yes. It us part of an indirectly related yet interconnected pattern. The starving coral reminds me of fungus. It is a fungus that is starving bats of their reserves of energy during hibernation. It’s a fungus that is suffocating frogs through their skin. The pale cells of an empty hive….. Humans (myself included) try to cleanse our world of the life we find most inconvenient to our own. In the process, it has made those things even stronger while harming everything else around us instead. It’s like the whole world’s immune system is being stressed and this branching pattern looks like how infection spreads. I don’t see humanity as an “infection”, but convenience over long term thinking and effects and forgetting we are part of a larger network of a living planet, that is and needs correcting.

fiveXfive: Charles Darwin said we shouldn’t use a tree of life, but a coral of life… Why?

Allan: I thought that was so cool! Darwin felt that a tree illustrated a hierarchy (like the ‘evolutionary ladder’), but the biosphere has no hierarchy. No krill = no whales. Coral on the other hand is a cooperative of organisms that build life on the dead stuff/energy that was there before it. You can see that as evolution, but also in support of our decomposers in our ecosystem. What goes into our environment, that “energy” is then re-released to create new life once it has passed. A plastic bottle doesn’t let go of that energy because it doesn’t decompose, so it hoards it. It doesn’t make a place for new life because it doesn’t ‘die’ and thus stunts that branch of life. I don’t think Darwin saw the future of plastics when he chose that metaphor, but I do think he understood nature well enough to recognize repeating patterns and felt we should learn from them.

fiveXfive: What were some of the things that surprised you about the length of our time on this planet while researching this work?

Allan: Quite a bit actually. I have a MUCH greater appreciation for what bacteria did for the Earth. I’m much more interested in early Earth than ever! I also have a lot more respect for the ozone and how it contributed to the diversity explosion on the planet. First, without it, you can’t keep the climate’s temperature regulated and life really needs that stability. Also, Ultraviolet Rays get a daily reduction to sun-burns and skin cancer, but you can’t get complex life with any ease because DNA and UV Rays don’t mix.

fiveXfive: Is there strength in fragility?

Allan: Just because you might be fragile, doesn’t mean you can’t be resilient and persistent. That’s what I’ve learned from nature. I think we are all both strong and fragile, it just depends on the circumstances. I think what we see is “fragile” is always truly underestimated. Coral is a plant and animal making its own food that can poop rocks that it builds it’s micro cities with. I’m not that independent. Alone a useless species, but with others, we’re all amazing at survival. It’s like learning. We all feel vulnerable when we are doing it but makes us stronger if you accept that state and grow from what you can gain rather than focusing on how you might feel weak at the moment.

fiveXfive: Are you an environmentalist? Can an artist ever separate themselves from being an environmentalist?

Allan: I would like to be an environmentalist. The message and aims that are in this work 100% yes. I want people to see the globe as an interconnected living thing. I want to protect threatened species. I’ve been a vegetarian for 22 years. I want to change the way we design, produce things. I want us to rethink material science……. Yet I use clay as a material. It “comes from the Earth”, but glazes and the energy it uses, let alone it won’t readily decompose like say paper will. Then to keep doing this ecological work, I have to sell to a client. My work has to “last”. No one wants to buy something that breaks (and yet we do all the time), but I feel like my work makes more sense when it comes apart. I think if I said “yes!”, there will be critics pointing out all my ecological ‘sins’. But to say ‘no’ really gets away from personal growth. It’s like health. You might not be perfect at everything, but every good habit helps and working to build even better ones as you go along the way is even better. You eventually get to a healthy place but can’t give up. I think we judge each other so quickly, people tend to give up. We all earn our saint-hood in our own ways, but it won’t be a perfect score. Yes, I think an artist can separate themselves from being an environmentalist, but probably not from the environment itself unless they are living in outer space.

fiveXfive: Do you think nature’s design is accidental or intentional?

Allan: I think the secret to life is luck and fractals. Evolutions’ natural selection favors things that are efficient and effective, so we see those patterns over and over again. As Janine Benyus says “3.8 billion years of field testing”. I think if we designed our products more like nature, we could solve some of our modern problems with Biomimicry. Why doesn’t our pipe system look more like the vascular system of plants? Why aren’t our football helmets structured like the skulls of woodpeckers and rams? Why aren’t we growing our cars and other structural materials like shells? Nature just keeps testing the designs and ‘builds on the dead stuff’ by recycling the energy to make something new. My dad says “nature never makes a color mistake.” Even the peacock mantis shrimp is able to pull its getup off.

fiveXfive: Where is the planet heading in the 21st century?

Allan: I don’t know what will happen. We are at a critical point, but our response will be relative to the way we feel connected to the world, people and organisms around us. I can’t make recommendations for others, but these are my goals that hopefully bring us in an optimistic direction. 1- Increase my empathy for all life forms, people, politics, beliefs and behaviors. 2- Think about time on a generational scale, not just my bank account. 3- See myself as part of the biosphere, not just squatting on it. 4- Even intimate objects like rocks, stars, and galaxies etc. – those things get recycled and redistributed after ‘death’. We build on the dead stuff that came before, but only if the energy / matter is put back into the system for reuse. 5- I can’t save the world and won’t be anyone’s ideal but I am trying to think of my actions and how those impacts others as I go through my life in a much more conscious way. Although my moment in history is relatively brief, I’m still responsible for it.
Visit Abbi Allan at www.abbiaallan.com.