SPVH - End Presentation / Exhibition

2018

Solar Powered Vernacular House 2013-2018

Political Climate Change or State of Denial*

At the inaugural conference of the Solar Powered Vernacular House project in the MSU in 2013, it was stated that the causes for and means to prevent global warming have been known for decades. Furthermore, it was made clear that our responsibility as citizens, particularly cultural industry professionals, is to begin enacting long overdue energy related everyday adjustments in our private and professional lives. The point was made that a political climate change was desperately needed both worldwide and locally to counteract climate change, and that the goal of the project was to provide a forum for presenting and considering alternatives to the business as usual state of affairs and formulate concrete steps to improve the MSU’s energy efficiency.

Five years later, some progress with renewable energy has been made globally, but the end result is worse: the atmospheric CO2 levels continue to accelerate. The major industrial nations can't commit themselves to binding agreements to save energy and limit fossil fuel consumption. All the scientific data suggests that our ecosystems are at odds with unlimited economic growth, with unrestrained capitalism. Or, as Naomi Klein said, “... we have not done the things that are necessary to lower emissions because those things fundamentally conflict with deregulated capitalism, the reigning ideology for the entire period we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.”  Put differently; if there is no other viable solution to fixing this imbalance other than a major structural shift away from the abuse of the personal profits ideology, away from the supremacy of capital and the tyrannical headlock of the banks to something more all-inclusive, then this shift must be considered.

So where does the MSU fit into all this? Is the MSU, one of the biggest museums on the national level, setting a positive example for Croatian society in terms of energy related responsibility? In this context, how can it set an example as one of the biggest contemporary art museums in south-eastern Europe? Has the new building contributed to more efficient administering of municipal cultural activities within the professional field of contemporary art? Should that be the main goal of investing in new premises? And if not, what will it take for the MSU to actively embrace a long-term commitment to overhauling its energy profile in a transparent way? Or, as Rafaella Zanatta from the EPEA formulated in her presentation in December 2015, “How could we implement a 25 year plan within the MSU to significantly reduce or even eliminate CO2 emissions, with the proposed pavilion  as the first step in this process?”

The project documented in this publication was to find its long term home in a pavilion entitled “SPVH – Solar Powered Vernacular House”, proposed to be built as a solar power plant placed on the roof terrace of the MSU building. The plant was to be designed to function as an exhibition and work-space at once. The pavilion was to host shows, educational programs and collaborations, its mission being to strategically address wider audiences on sustainability issues as well as to implement energy efficiency solutions to the MSU building itself. Why is there a need for that?

The new building has mainly been a by-product of the big aspirations of local politics. If we continue pretending that the new museum building is great and interesting architecture, we will fail our historical duty related to energy issues. Moreover, these issues are deeply interconnected with various professional fields, in this case contemporary art. The building, in use now for 8 years, is in my opinion hardly sustainable. Within the building, I noticed one mechanical system in continuous conflict with another, producing additional workloads.  Likewise, I have seen how the technical staff and building maintenance crew are constantly under pressure and overwhelmed by the competing curatorial expectations, followed by maintenance demands and management requests related to space rentals in order to generate income for building maintenance. The conclusion of an energy efficiency study can be formulated as follows: Caused to a great extent by the above mentioned energy inefficiency of its building, which then influences the working conditions, and in consequence the museum profile and function, the MSU has failed to foster a new bonanza of art and artists’ potentials in the country, as has been expected from the art community. This claim is even more true, considering that the resources trapped in the expensive overhead could potentially be invested in local artistic production and presentation.

During the SPVH project to date, I noticed two basic reaction patterns on the part of the museum and municipal administrations, when enquiring about the MSU energy efficiency profile.  In practice, the initiatives  presented to the public during the SPVH conference and workshops, documented in this publication, have for the most part been overlooked by the museum management and curatorial staff, and some concrete SPVH proposals have gone unheeded respectively by the city administration. The proposals involved promoting a change of attitude, a political climate change aimed to improve the building functions. The second reaction pattern was to embrace a proposal on a declarative level and then quickly give up on its realization. We can confirm that the SPVH project contributed to a certain extent to the positive flow of information about sustainable solutions to the museum’s energy problems. In several cases the MSU management seemed to have followed up on ideas generated by the SPVH workshops and established contacts. It is regrettable that these attempts  have not been continued.

As far as I am informed, no significant comprehensive improvements have been made to date, March 2018, in terms of the energy efficiency of the MSU building.  As initiator and author of the SPVH project, I keep posing myself a question: Has anything been learned to avoid similar future failures? Could the SPVH project possibly stimulate this important cultural institution to address the major cultural and civic issues of our times? From my point of view, I see the failures as an inherent structural part of local municipal and political hierarchies. I see that any future project of this kind needs to secure thorough preparation, transparent communication, and outspoken definition and agreement of common interests on the sides of the project initiators and involved institutions,  as well as the local politics and municipal administration. In this respect the SPVH project could be either a missed chance or a chance that should not be missed, having already served mostly to expose this systemic dysfunctionalism, and having wanted to do much more. This leads to another question: What exactly do those who we have been delegated to oversee and manage the public goods need as a wake-up call for the serious and responsible  energy efficiency work to begin?

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*artist’s text from the exhibition publication: Solar Powered Vernacular House 2013-2018, David Smithson, MSU Zagreb (2018), pgs. 8-9.