An Interview with Beau Bree Rhee
Beau Bree Rhee is an artist, choreographer and part-time professor at Parsons School of Design. Beau teaches the Sustainable Systems course and an elective titled Beyond the Visual: The Olfactive, Haptic, & Somatic.
Headshot by Maria Canon
Henao
Sustainable Systems is a mandatory course for all first-year Parsons Design students taught every semester. How does your inflection on 'Materials' impact the curriculum? What have been the materials the students focused on over the 5 semesters of teaching the course?
In an art & design school, we (myself included) are tactile creatures that are interested in being seduced by beautiful and wonderful materials. Materials have been a way for me in Sustainable Systems to tap into that innate curiosity and generate a deep wonder towards our natural world. This is the first step towards generating a real personal connection with the students to the aims of the course Sustainable Systems. That is home base: reverence & wonder for our natural world. There’s so much doom & gloom and information around climate change these days; it’s easy for people to feel overwhelmed and shut down. But I think once you have awe, you’re able to work through the darkness.
Early on in the semester, I schedule a class visit to the Donghia Healthier Materials Library (which is a treasure trove of innovative materials, sometimes futuristic like algae fibers or fabric made from ocean plastic, sometimes ancient like cochineal dye) and have them choose 3 materials that spark their interest. The students complete research prompts for each material and submit a paper.
As future artists & designers, this is a valuable exercise that helps them realize that materials don’t just magically appear. It creates an awareness of all the steps and humans (& non-humans) it takes to get something as simple as, say, a marble countertop or beeswax coated fabric. It’s the first step to understanding that materials are not neutral; there are those that create positive change in the world and there are those that create negative change in the world. We discuss supply chain, ethical labor, water footprint, transport emissions, material health, runoff, offgassing…it creates an understanding that the material choices you make as a designer/artist are in fact ethical. There are real aha moments when we learn about companies that create beautiful, desirable, sustainable AND ethical products with net-positive environmental and social footprints!
It places design & art in the realm of what I call “mini utopia making” which sounds rainbow-eyed but it’s really important. We need vision, now more than ever. This kind of moral ambition can’t really be taught without wonder and awe. You need to love what you want to protect.
Some of the favorites over the semesters have been:
Could you tell a little about your role in developing the 'Recipe Cards' for Precious Plastics/ Mycelium Foam?
My role in developing the Recipe Cards for our science modules was centered around finding the connections between design, science and art and actually blurring them.
Arta Yazdanseta approached me to design & art direct the Recipe Cards for Sustainable Systems. We have a total of 6 now: Natural Dye (Hot & Cold process), Mycelium Foam, Kombucha Leather, Ocean Acidification, Precious Plastics.
My job was really to take the amazing content that had been developed by various faculty members (Laura Sansone, Oliver Kellhammer, Dave Marin, Jamie Kruse) and create a set of protocols so that all 500 students taking Sustainable Systems could have a unified experience of these science modules.
I think one of the most exciting aspect of developing these was combining the elements into a cohesive & broad learning experience: the basic kitchen-recipe- how-tos, the bigger questions & ideas around the science modules, and then research showing how contemporary projects (brands, artists, designers) that are engaging with these processes. It’s wonderful to have students be aware that their experiments in college are linked to a much bigger global movement of sustainable innovation in science, design & art.
It was also very fun to work with our talented student workers, Yiqi Wang & Mimi Guan, who created the step-by-step illustrations. I approached it as a collaboration with them, and it was very valuable to have their input as students. It was exciting to see a kind of “visual vocabulary & identity” come forth for Sustainable Systems. I’d like to think that it comes across as clear, fun, approachable, relevant and smart. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by such talented faculty colleagues & students.
Corporality-1, 2017.7.13 18h30-19h30. Soap and pigment on paper 9’ x 12’
*The drawing was created during an hour-long performance, titled Analemma
Analemma light vessel, 2016, brass and silver 4” x 9” *An analemma is a shape the sun makes in the sky throughout the year, seen from one location on earth.
Could you please share a little about your independent work as an artist & choreographer, and what role sustainability/climate change plays in your work?
My artistic work of the last 4 years has really been centered around creating ecosystems of dance, drawing and ecology. I work mainly in performance & works on paper these days. My latest performance piece in March 2020 called Performance as Landscape was about themes of breath, loss/absentia and rage/grief related to climate change. The project has taken on a much larger meaning in the last few weeks in COVID-19.
I aim for the same creation of wonder as I described above, but in a different way. With teaching, you have to be more literal. In my creative practice, there’s room for metaphor, for abstraction, for philosophy. There’s room for the sublime. The sublime is really important for me; art historically it’s linked to work that is about a sense of overwhelming awe of nature. It’s not necessarily about pure beauty per se; there’s an element of fear there, too.
Coming from a dance background, it might seem counterintuitive to talk about ecology and non-human biocentrism through the human body. However, the body is our biology and thus our main connection to our ecosystem. The body is a cosmic being and a relational site; it is a living porous space where we live in radical dependency to the world.
It’s incredible to think that, for example, we breathe 12 cubic meters of air per day. Or that our bodies are 60% water. Once we acknowledge how connected and dependent we are to our environment and the elements, it seems natural to think of choreography as a way to understand and think about ecology.
Ephemerality & non-monumentality are important. Dance & performance are fleeting. My interest in drawing stems from its lightweight and minimal nature. There’s a legerity & freedom in working with such direct and immediate mediums. It’s also an ethical stance; why make another beautiful thing (in a world with so much stuff)?
Horizon Dot Drawings 2018, India ink on paper 28cm x 35.5cm
Commissioned for the curatorial project and publication Strange Attractors, 10th Berlin Biennale at Contemporary Art
In the majority of my projects from the last 4 years, I’ve incorporated research stemming from philosophy, ecology, astronomy, biology. This research informs my choreography & my drawings, such as the Horizon Dots project I created for the Berlin Biennale in 2018 or Analemma, commissioned by the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in 2017. For example, the Horizon Dots drawings each represents a different paradigm of ecology. Seed growth in one season. The ocean as seen by a floating body. One revolution around the sun. An hour of movement by a human body; an hour of movement by a non-human body. An analemma is the path the sun makes in the sky for one year, seen from one continuous place on earth. The Analemma performance expressed this idea of time in performance & drawing.
I think that the meaningful future of creative practice lies in these dialogues that merge science, art, dance, philosophy (etc)… In this way, the practice of moving the human body takes on a much greater social and philosophical significance. Re- thinking & re-choreographing our movements can become one small step towards creating more just & sustainable societies.
Georgia O’Keeffe, Peach & Glass 1927, 6x9”
Here’s a parting image from Georgia O’Keeffe that’s given me strength during my pandemic quarantine. It conveys such keen observation, and that sense of wonder & awe I discussed earlier. It’s so simple, but it says so much. The peach & glass of milk are sensual and palpable, but for me they also bring up questions of how we live, how we sustain ourselves and each other, our relationship to food and the seasons. The preciousness of each bloom, fruit and drop of milk. It makes me dream of the future, of re-creating & re-designing the very means of sustenance that could radically transform our relationship to the earth.