The Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility

Project fieldwork: Chinese engineers explain the carbon capture system at Shidongkou 2nd Power Plant Carbon Capture Demonstration Project in Shanghai

Jamie Allen (IXDM) and Karolina Sobecka with their piece Public Carbon Capture Request for Qualifications & Expressions of Interest (RFQ) in the exhibition The Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility at University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum.

In response to a call for public art proposals for the California Air Resources Board, they propose the construction of an active carbon capture and storage system as public sculpture. The project effects stakeholders and entails support and collaborative effort from diverse fields — art, design, engineering, governance and policy, along with all things living within Earth’s atmospheric canopy. Since the early decades of integrated reliance on fossil fuels, the shadow of atmospheric carbon emissions has grown darker and more sinister. This shadow continues to elongate, as most technology to extract carbon dioxide out of the air (“carbon capture”) is today developed by the petrochemical industry.

This document, Public Carbon Capture Request for Qualifications & Expressions of Interest (RFQ), issued by Karolina Sobecka and Jamie Allen, elaborates Carbon Capture and Sequestration actors and stakeholders, flows, sources and sinks, as well as the rudiments of capture and storage systems, in the hopes of garnering further interdisciplinary collaborations, substantiation, sponsorship and stewardship. It is the beginning of a story about carbon capture as a rich space for public discussions in and atmospheric and planetary commons.