Kim Kraczon in conversation with ROKBOX

Kim Kraczon is an undeniable gift to the art world; a conservator with a passion for sustainability and a background in the conservation of modern materials and contemporary art.

During her eight years working for Olafur Eliasson, whose work often addresses the issues of climate change, the studio explored production, transport, shipping, and packaging materials, and ways of improving sustainability metrics in those areas.

This set Kim on her path to become one of the art world’s most respected sustainable materials experts.

I’m speaking to Kim Kraczon through my 13” x 15”, our animated 2D images tripping along the fibres between London and Berlin.

Aside from a couple of tiny houseplant flies that try to join the conversation - they’re rather fond of sustainability apparently - I have exclusive access to Kim’s marvellous mind; her knowledge of sustainable materials and her boundary-breaking ideas about artwork life spans, deaccessioning and climate justice in art. 

A long time friend of ROKBOX, Kim Kraczon is emphatic about the importance of transitioning to a circular economy in art, advocating for using existing resources rather than constantly acquiring new ones.

She simply states: "The circular economy is the only way forward." 

Our conversation covers Kim’s journey into sustainable materials in art and her thoughts on the need for a more holistic approach to sustainability. She outlines her work with the Gallery Climate Coalition and a new tool to help artists make more environmentally and socially responsible decisions. She shares her thoughts on managing collection size to reduce the environmental impact and allow space for new, previously under-represented artists to enter the fold.

ROKBOX: So tell us, what first sparked your interest in sustainability? 

Kim: I was working as resident conservator in Olafur Eliasson’s Berlin studio about five years ago and I started researching materials for art production and packaging. It was very frustrating at the time, because there weren't any research resources available. I was constantly confronted with greenwashing and marketing claims, especially when looking into particular packaging materials and various bioplastics that had claims of being biodegradable or compostable.

I initially started looking into particular packaging materials and finding various bioplastics that had claims of being biodegradable or compostable. You think, ‘Great! I just solved this issue, there's no more work to be done here’. But then there’s the conservation concern of the packaging materials reacting in the crate with the artwork. Additionally, these bioplastics are marketed as compostable but specifically require industrial composting. They are sorted out from organic material at the industrial compost facilities because they don’t yield a nutrient-rich biomass in the resulting fertilizer, so it’s not so simply solved.

I linked up with Caitlin Southwick from Ki Culture who had just started her nonprofit focusing on sustainability and cultural heritage. We spoke after a webinar Caitlin gave and we were lamenting over the lack of resources, and she mentioned she was planning on creating resources specifically for the cultural heritage sector and already had a concept for the  structure of these resources.

Ki Culture creates Ki Books, available for the sector to download and use. There's one in Social Sustainability, Energy and Waste and Materials - and two more on Education & Engagement and Exhibitions set for publication in the coming year. I was at the helm of the Waste and Materials Ki Book, which is a sustainability manual for collections, care and transport. It discusses the various materials that we encounter in collections, care and transport, like Tyvek and bubble wrap, and provides tips on reusing and repurposing them. There's a section on alternative materials as well, which I’m revising this year because, now I realise some of these materials aren't as sustainable or as environmentally low impact as I originally assumed.

So that’s how I got into the world of sustainability and cultural heritage and the arts sector. From there I started working with the Gallery Climate Coalition Berlin branch and contributed to materials and packaging resources for the GCC website.

ROKBOX: Gallery Climate Coalition are doing great work to convene and educate. What are you working on at the moment? 

Kim: We’re working on a toolkit for artists to offer resources, templates, and guidelines to help artists make environmentally and socially responsible decisions in every aspect of their practice. It covers art production, exhibition making, transport and commissioning.

ROKBOX: So it covers everything, holistically? The whole whole lifespan of an artwork?

Kim: Absolutely yes, the entire lifespan of the artwork or exhibition from planning, design, production, and shipping, to communicating environmental and social responsibility when working with galleries, museums and commissioning bodies.

The conclusion I came to after years of researching materials and all these sustainability claims is that there’s no such thing as a “sustainable” material - it's more so a negotiation among a plethora of sustainability metrics.

You can have something that's reusable, made from plastic perhaps, but how many times does it need to be reused to negate the other associated environmental impacts, such as environmental toxicity? How do we determine that? Or, are sustainable materials something that's naturally-derived, carbon sequestering, and biodegradable but possibly affects biodiversity? There's so many different environmental impact categories associated with materials. So we’re trying to develop a digital tool - a bit like STiCH’s ROKBOX Life Cycle Analysis report that highlights various impact categories - that is a holistic evaluation of materials and their disposal methods. 

This will be more like an evaluation and educational tool and would include environmental and human toxicity, the sourcing of the raw materials, and potential for circularity. We hope to additionally highlight issues related to working conditions and the impact on local communities. It would be a very holistic evaluation of materials that extends beyond a carbon footprint.

People are currently hyper-focused on carbon footprint and I'm not saying it's not important, it is important, but after years of being involved in sustainability, I would prefer that people talk about the wider issues and changes needed to create a better world now. 

We live in a very dystopian world in a lot of ways and I want to see immediate changes in the way humans are being exploited.  We actually live off of a system of exploitation. So it's a way to highlight that and potentially bring about more immediate change. It's not just CO2. 

ROKBOX: And numerous artists are addressing climate justice in their work.

Kim: Yes, contemporary art is a driving force for culture and there is an undeniable influence and trickle down effect on pop and consumer culture. It’s also an echo chamber of sorts, but there is a freedom in art to explore concepts and experiment in a way that wouldn’t happen otherwise. 

ROKBOX: So the art world is in a prime position to influence society and bring issues to the fore. And it starts from within, right? 

KIM: Yes! Some museums are making massive strides. 

Guggenheim Bilbao, for example, they're doing a ton of positive work and investing into sustainability initiatives, such as switching all of their lighting to LED. 

Nevada Museum of Art is changing how they show their collection. For an upcoming exhibition on environmentalism, they are limiting the number of loaned artworks to 50%, and using 50% from their own collection to reduce transport emissions with plans to continue this 50/50 split moving forward. 

The biggest carbon emitters are transport, flying personnel and energy expenditure in buildings. One way some arts organisations are reducing their carbon footprint is encouraging; on site, local production, especially for installations and 3D works as opposed to artists making and fabricating artworks elsewhere and shipping them in. 

ROKBOX: What other examples of progress have you come across?

Kim: There is an artist residency called The Sustainable Institution and an artist collective from Canada called the  Synthetic Collective. 

Their concept for the residency is centred around giving artists the agency to determine the lifespan of the artwork, essentially by presenting an adaptable acquisitions protocol. The premise being that it is known from the moment of acquisition whether the artist wants to decline conservation treatments for the artwork as well as climate control in exhibition and storage spaces. 

Artworks will optically change over a period of time if they're made out of certain materials. How long of a period and in what ways depends on the material composition and surrounding environment. 

The aim of the project is allowing artists to essentially refuse conservation treatments and climate control, which are resource and energy intensive, by explicitly stating the optical  properties of their artwork will change over time. 

Artists embracing and incorporating elements of decomposition into artworks is not new, however, making this an accessible and widely acceptable practice is what we are hoping for. 

It's interesting because we're seeing a lot of the artists are using DIY bio materials, like algae and bio-plastics made from food waste. These materials will most certainly change very quickly if they aren't kept in a refrigerator in the dark.

It's challenging the notion of the static, fetishized art object and questioning, truly, what is art then?

What is the purpose of art? Is art something static, a speculation object? Or is it something that is going to shrink and warp and change colour, and lose optical properties?

I spoke at a panel at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum outside of Boston in December and their Artistic Director at the time, Jessica May, was interested in this concept and encouraged me to talk on the panel about these issues; that some artworks should die and that the art world needs to figure out how we re-define their lifespan. 

We can’t continue to say everything needs to be archived, and this leads us onto the topic of degrowing collections and deaccessioning artworks, which is complicated. 

ROKBOX: It’s a contentious and sensitive issue, but fascinating. Are people talking about it enough? 

Kim: Deaccessioning needs more attention. It means more manageable collections that are less energy intensive as a result, as they are smaller and require less space. Deaccessioning also makes room for new artists or artists that were underrepresented in the past. It’s important in that sense.

But then, in art, we always come back to the question of who determines what stays and what goes.  

Many museums are working on having microclimates for susceptible materials - sectioning off areas in storage facilities, to avoid the entire collection from being climatized. Storing only the works that need climate control in a smaller, sectioned off area will save energy and money, as the rest of the collection remains in ambient conditions. 

ROKBOX: What about storing work digitally, keeping digital copies of works that are deaccessioned? 

Kim: Digitizing also has a footprint. I haven’t researched this so I’m not certain if anyone has compared the carbon footprint and impacts of storing analogue 2D works, film, and video to storing them long-term digitally. 

ROKBOX: One imagines the digital footprint will be smaller.

Kim: Yes, however, it's not entirely safe, right? Files become corrupted, files need to be migrated, and the digital files need to be stored as hard copies as well. It’s not clear cut. You know, as a conservator, we come across these questions with time-based media. You need to store hard copies, multiple backups, locally and in the cloud, which is also comprised of hardware. And what is the footprint of that? 

ROKBOX: Yes, as an industry we don’t have all the data yet. And what about materials used in packaging - it’s an almost ignored part of the art materials story.  

Kim: In my lectures on materials, my focus is always on reducing consumption of plastics, but it's most relevant for single use plastics. 

When packaging is being reused over and again, plastics can have a place and are often necessary for the safe transport of artworks.

Conservators care about how any packaging material will perform and interact with the works in transit and storage, and then those in sustainability are concerned about what happens to these materials at the end of their working life. ROKBOX is made using polypropylene and not everyone knows that the crates and damaged parts go back to the factories to be recycled into new crates.

ROKBOX: Our crates are designed to be used hundreds of times so we’ve not yet had a crate reach its end of life. But we’ve designed ROKBOX to be circular. Once ROKBOX crates have been re-used till they literally fall apart, those parts will be re-made into new crates. Our aim is to eliminate single use packaging from shipping and bring the circular economy to the art world. The whole life cycle is important to us.

Kim: I’m very science-based on one hand but I try to find solutions by looking at the entire life-cycle of materials and not just hoping to switch one thing out for another. It’s imperative to think about materials holistically, equitably, and finding the ideal trade-off. Everything leads to more questions. I don't know exactly where the ROKBOX crates are produced, for example, so transparency is super important. Companies need to make testing procedures and sourcing information available and the data clear.

ROKBOX: We purposefully decided to have our crates made as close to home as possible, and our crates are made in the UK, with the exception of the LITE being made in the Netherlands, and our testing data is publicly available.

ROKBOX: Can you talk a bit more about the circular economy within materials and packaging in the art world?

Kim: Anytime I have the stage or spotlight I talk about this because every material has an impact. 

The consumption of anything has a negative effect and causes detriment to both people and the environment. The way you get around this is to use what we have already. The most impactful action one can take is to keep things in use for as long as possible. Use what you have at hand. 

Aside from regenerative materials, using what we already have is really the only way to combat the environmental and humanitarian impact of materials in the art sector. The circular economy is the only way forward.

However, it's not streamlined at the moment. We need to figure out a way to save time and human effort as well. 

ROKBOX: Whilst we’re still in the early days of the sharing economy and circular economy across industry and commerce, people are more open to it than ever before. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation is propelling things forward, and they were involved in MOMA'a Circular Museum series, featuring Luise Faurschou. The ROKBOX team have recently attended some round tables with the Arts Council to discuss circularity. And it’s certainly happening in pockets at household level with initiatives like the Library of Things and Olio, and other clothing apps. There’s a lot more to do though!

Kim: Exactly. There are material sharing and reuse platforms that are great, but I would like to see it go a step further and have systems to keep track of items and have built-in options for transport. Who organizes all this? We haven’t figured that out yet. 

The circular and sharing economy needs to be streamlined, where everything is integrated, with delivery services that mean it's not down to a few people devoting 10 extra hours a week on top of their normal job to engage with the circular economy. I think that's the biggest roadblock at the moment. 

ROKBOX: Can you share any example of progress in circularity in art?

Kim: It’s good that people are designing their own replacements for single use plastics like bubble wrap. 

When I was in the Netherlands, their national cultural agency was working on a reusable padded wrap to go around objects and furniture, moving it from the depot to their museums. It was great to see, and they designed it themselves. 

Then there’s Australian artist Jessie French who has developed an algae based bioplastic Other Matter™ that is being used for wall text as a replacement for vinyl. She makes sheets of algae bioplastic and has  letters cut out ready to stick on walls. She's even working with a few retail chains and they are using it on display windows. At the end they remove the algae letters, send it back to her and she reconstitutes it back down into a new sheet. It's perfect.  

ROKBOX: That is very exciting, what a brilliant innovation! Now, we’ve covered so much. If you want our wonderful readers to come away from this remembering one piece of advice, what would it be?  

Kim: Reduce consumption. Reduce consumption of packaging, clothing, of anything newly produced. 

Reduce the urge to buy new stuff. It's sad because we live in a very disconnected society where purchasing things generates dopamine and sometimes the only thing that brings any sort of joy to people's lives. But it’s fleeting. Use what you have already. 

When I first started researching sustainability and materials, I had the urge to throw away all my plastic food storage containers and go out and buy glass containers. But no, use what you have first. Don’t be worried about virtue signalling. Don’t throw away a perfectly good pair of Nike’s to get a brand new pair of ethical shoes. Just use what you have. 

The most impactful action one can take is to keep things in use for as long as possible and use what you have at hand. Aside from regenerative materials, using what we already have is really the only way to combat the environmental and social impact of the materials we use in the art sector. The circular economy is the only way forward.

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