On account of his book-signing tonight for How To Start and Run a Commercial Gallery (which I’m rather enjoying so far), Edward Winkleman limited today’s blog entry to a handful of juicy links. Two had already crossed my radar earlier this week but what really sent my eyebrow straight to the ceiling was this piece from Artforum.com announcing the European Union’s ban on traditional glowing filament lightbulbs.
Ilya Kabakov, The Man Who Flew Into His Picture, 1981-88. (Image from www.moma.org)
Quoting from the admittedly short news item: As the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s Till Briegleb reports, the ban will have an impact on art, specifically works that use lightbulbs for either functional, aesthetic, or historical effects. A case in point is the work of the Russian artist Ilya Kabakov, who often hangs a bare lightbulb in his installations as a melancholic homage to the Soviet-era ideal of electricity, which was not always available to the citizens.
Because the new EU law 2005/32/EG leaves no exceptions whatsoever, it will therefore become illegal to acquire replacement lightbulbs for Kabakov’s installations as well as the works of a great many other artists who have used traditional lightbulbs in their work, including Olafur Eliasson, Mike Kelley, Robert Rauschenberg and Joseph Beuys, to name but a few. Certainly, museums could start stockpiling the necessary bulbs to keep these installations operational, but no stockpile can last forever and the $70,000 fine applied to the illegal sale of those bulbs in future is more than a little prohibitive, as I’m sure is exactly its intention.
So leaving aside the obvious detrimental impact of such a ban on all these artworks, I find the potential solutions to this obstacle, and the changes they’ll enact of the art objects themselves, strangely fascinating. Even if that stockpile of lightbulbs from the Before-Times were kept on hand for exhibition purposes, would that lightbulb remain illegal, and thus add a whiff of criminality to Kabakov’s installation? Would the creation of some new lightbulb facsimile be seen as part of the on-going stewardship of the work, or a sad act of revisionism that would strip the lightbulb of Kabakov’s original meaning? Perhaps the installations in question could be shifted about the globe to countries where the sale of glowing filament bulbs remains legal, at least until all so-called civilized countries have done the ecologically responsible thing and enacted their own lightbulb-bans, at which point Ilya Kabakov’s installations can move to some floating-volcano fortress out in the neutral ground of the Pacific where its contraband lightbulbs can be replenished by some shadowy criminal mastermind a la James Bond. That might bring another nice Cold War tang to the work.
Or, if that seems impractical, one could always ask the artists how they intend to proceed in this new dark age of illegal lightbulbs. The majority of these artists are still alive (I’m ashamed to admit I had to wikipedia Kabakov to be sure, it seems he lives on Long Island), and therefore available to make their own decisions about future installations of their work. I suspect the solution will vary from artist to artist, but it could be interesting to see how each instance plays out. In the meantime, I’ll keep my fingers crossed on that illicit supervillain art-fortress.
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COMMENTS / ONE COMMENT
peterdub added these pithy words on Jul 30 09 at 5:32 pmUnfortunatelu it’s not just the EU….
The new USA Energy Bill now before the Senate also includes regulation on what lights are allowed for artwork illumination.
Such pointless pettiness.
Saving the planet doesn’t mean having to ban light bulbs.Europeans and Americans choose to buy ordinary light bulbs around 9 times out of 10 (light industry data 2007-8)
Banning what people want gives the supposed savings - no point in banning an impopular product!If new LED lights -or improved CFLs- are good,
people will buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (little point).
If they are not good, people will not buy them - no need to ban ordinary light bulbs (no point).
The arrival of the transistor didn’t mean that more energy using radio tubes had to be banned… they were bought less anyway.All lights have advantages….
The ordinary simple light bulb has for many people a pleasing appearance, it responds quickly with bright broad spectrum light, is easy to use with dimmers and other equipment, can come in small sizes, and has safely been used for over 100 years.100 W+ equivalent brightness is a particular issue - difficult and expensive with both fluorescents and LEDS - yet such incandescent bulbs are first in line for banning in both America and the EU
Energy?
Since when does Europe or America need to save on electricity?
There is no energy shortage.
Note that if there was an energy shortage, the price rise would make people buy more efficient products anyway - no need to legislate for it.Energy security?
There are usually plenty of local energy sources,
Middle East oil is not used for electricity generation, 1/2 world uranium exports are from Canada and Australia.Consumers - not politicians - pay for the energy used.
Certainly it is good to let people know how they can save energy and money - but why force them to do it?Emissions?
Most cars have emissions.
But does a light bulb give out any gases?
Power stations might not either:
In Sweden and France, as in Washington state practically all electricity is emission-free, while around half of it is in many European countries and in states like New York and California.
Why should emission-free households be denied the use of lighting they obviously want to use?
Low emission households will increase everywhere, since emissions will be reduced anyway through the planned use of coal/gas processing technology or energy substitution.Also, the savings amounts can be questioned for many reasons:
For a referenced list of reasons against light bulb bans, see
http://www.ceolas.net/#li1x onwardsEven if a reduction in use was needed, then taxation to reduce consumption would make more sense since government can use the income to reduce emissions (home insulation schemes, renewable projects etc) more than any remaining product use causes such problems.
People can still buy what they want, unlike with bans.
However taxation on electrical appliances is hardly needed either, and is in principle wrong for similar reasons to bans (for example, emission-free households are hit too).
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