Planetarium

Kyoung Kim and Drew Denny—who is also part of L.A. RECORD—are not (quite yet) going to change the world, but they will reflect it back more clearly with the Reclamations series. First is Planetarium, a dome made of recycled parts where you can see the stars inside Hollywood and Highland. This interview by Daiana Feuer.What is this place?Drew Denny: Our project is called Planetarium and the space is called Environmentaland.Kyoung Kim: It’s part of Global Inheritance and its mission is to promote environmental practices through innovation and creativity.So this is a new art exhibit space?DD: It’s supposed to be a museum where different environmental issues are dealt with through playful technology. The first exhibits are rolling out throughout July. I like that we’re here in this weird spot in the middle of Hollywood where you wouldn’t expect this to be happening.Not with Absolut ads all over the windows. DD: We’re inside of a giant vodka bottle. I leave late at night and there’s drunk girls wearing way-too-short skirts falling over with their high heels. Are these people going to come in? Are they going to get it? But I like that. You don’t want to just be preaching to the choir.Can you describe Planetarium?KK: Planetarium is part of a series we’re doing called Reclamations. The basic premise is, ‘What would happen if people took the environment as seriously as religion?’ When we were growing up, the conversation on the environment wasn’t that in-depth but now it’s at the forefront of a lot of policy and industry issues and manufacturing—we’ve gotten past the point of just recycling. The conversation can go from really benign to really zealous—religious almost. So we want to talk about those spaces. What is the belief system? How do people practice that every day? There’s a spiritual quality to creating a space that isn’t in the regular conversation.How does Planetarium address the religious aspect?DD: Almost every single thing we used to make it is reused, repurposed and recycled. All that paper that’s covering it—which is like 6,000 sheets of paper—has been cut in half, folded and essentially quilted to be made into fabric that’s going to cover the outside and the inside of the dome. Kyoung made rice glue instead of toxic glue. She boiled rice, salt and water for hours and hours. The actual geodesic dome structure has been reused from a previous installation. All the wood is scraps we found at school or that we’re going to use for the fourth Reclamation. We used less than a box of staples, some screws, and a roll of tape. It’s nice to say it like that—it feels good—but the process of avoiding anything that wasn’t reused involved so much work. We’ve had a few people help us and it’s been amazing to see how long you can convince someone to sit on the floor and fold paper and paste it together with rice glue. Just paste triangles. That whole thing!What’s taken the longest?KK: Cutting the paper. I had to collect the paper over months. I became a trash lady. Always rifling through recycling bins. Then cutting it into the right pieces. Then folding it into the quilt. Then pasting. Those three processes alone—I just graduated and when I should have been doing my thesis or even going out, I didn’t go out this year. All I did was stay at home and cut paper.DD: That’s pretty religious. That’s a lot of sacrifice. It’s been really rough but also meditative—when you’re sitting there doing the same thing over and over. I feel really intimate with this paper now. I know every crease. I’ve never put so many hours into one object before. This is just the start. Planetarium is the first of the four projects. We’re representing something that you don’t get to see much in L.A. because of all the air pollution. Here, you can come into this white dome and do it yourself. We don’t have to plug anything in. When you go in there and turn the crank, you’re the reason that the bulb is shining. You’re the reason you get to see the constellations.How would a person who visits your exhibit be able to absorb the religious part of it? Is it because they know how long you spent on it?KK: We’re making a display to talk about the materials used.Ah, that’s Biblical. DD: We’re writing a Bible, actually. We both have this interest in belief systems and how people spread their beliefs. Someone could consider me an environmentalist though sometimes that is a dirty word. I’m really interested in how belief systems can get people to do things and change their behavior. Speaking in tongues, for instance—how do you get people to do that? And then you talk to somebody about recycling and they’re like, ‘Oh, it doesn’t even work. It actually uses more energy than it saves.’ Where did you even hear that?KK: I had a roommate who refused to separate. So I would go into the trash and do it.You’re always the trash lady. KK: I know—I would ask her, ‘Why don’t you recycle? In California you don’t even have to separate.’ And she was like, ‘I just don’t believe it works.’ ‘Even if there’s a one-percent chance it might work?’ It’s small gestures like that. For me what’s really interesting is asking how is it that beliefs work and communities are created and we have common systems of understanding and belief and faith without actually seeing a lot of these things? Using this environmental aspect puts it on a basis that people can actually engage with in conversation but also in a really practical way. It is something that people have opinions about but don’t necessarily think about as religion, which is again something people can’t talk about without getting heated. The vocabulary with which people talk about it has the same kind of fervor in it at this point. It’s not a mocking thing. I just want to know—how does this work? Building this thing and giving ourselves these insane parameters. We should write a version of the Confessions because there have been points where I was like, ‘This is ridiculous.’DD: I almost lost faith.KK: What made me come back to it? I have this partner in this project that I can’t let down. So community—even one other person—will reinforce that. What’s the bigger picture? What if I don’t do this? What will happen? What are the consequences one way or another? Thinking about all the time I invested in this—just the investment of time—it’s weird how certain things we do—menial things—we may hate it at first, but after the time we put in, it becomes part of our system of belief. We make it into meaning something. It’s gesture. When you start running, it doesn’t matter. Then people become marathon runners. It becomes something you have to do every day. Runners are so passionate about their running—they have a whole vocabulary and philosophy behind it.DD: We have all these words now that we use. People come in to help us for a day and we’re like, ‘Can you hand me a flat wonky?’ All the fabric covering of the dome is made out of these triangles—most of them are triangles but to make sure no light is getting through, we’ve had to make some shapes a little different and those shapes are called wonkies. It’s nice to see other people getting excited about it and that’s one of the first steps of creating a new community. You have these words in common or these actions that you’re doing together that other people aren’t doing. One of my goals in dealing with the religion aspect of this is I think environmentalism could use a little evangelical influence, I think.How can you do that? Poop outside?KK: There are the extremes. We’re not saying go back to the land. Realistically, that ideal doesn’t work. We can’t stop everything. ‘Don’t use cars, don’t use this or that.’ That’s not where our society is.DD: There’s not enough space. And that’s just unrealistic and boring. You’re losing so many people if that’s the choice we make.KK: Then you have the other extreme of people who say global warming doesn’t exist.DD: They teach that at Pentecostal homeschooling. ‘Global warming is a lie created by Democrats.’What happens when this project is over? Does the religion die?DD: The Planetarium will be up until the end of August. We’ll have lectures and workshops. I happen to know a roboticist—the drummer of my band Big Whup—who is getting a Ph.D. He’s helped engineer the hand crank. We’re going to have workshops to teach people how to do this themselves. The display will have a box of the amount of paper we used. That’s just one box that an office can go through ‘like that.’ This box of paper that is everywhere, this can also be ‘this.’ It had potential to be a planetarium that you wouldn’t have thought about until you see this. I want people to look at everything like that. Since this project, everything I touch I’m like—what else could this be? As soon as this one goes down, we go to the next project at Sea and Space. That one we’re dealing with water, and it’s going to be a water filtration and irrigation system suspended from the ceiling. When you walk in you won’t see anything on the floor or walls and there will be a ladder. You can climb the ladder and contribute water, gray water, polluted water, whatever you want. And the water will pass through the system through different materials—rocks, gravel, sand, charcoal. And along the way they’re feeding little microflora—little ecosystems. When you contribute the water you don’t know where it’s going. Just as in Planetarium, a small gesture can have a huge impact. Turn the crank and you see these constellations. And in this next one it’s about faith. You have to do this thing and you don’t know where it’s going. We put cans in a blue bin and say, ‘OK, something good is coming of this.’ So much of religion and prayer and those rituals and also environmentalism are like, ‘Do this and I promise, something good is happening.’ You don’t see where it’s going but out back at Sea and Space we’re going to plant a garden and build a pond and have a terrarium. The water you contribute goes there. Small gesture—big impact you can experience.KK: Religion is a dicey word. It’s more about faith—understanding why we do what we do. Neither of us are religious.DD: Planetarium was an idea for so long that we talked about. And now it’s become this thing that you can see and touch. There were so many ways that it couldn’t have happened. At every step there was some impending doom and I just always knew it was going to happen.KK: I just kept cutting paper.