Margot Bowman

Margot Bowman

Your latest project, W.E.T., makes me somehow recall the visionary book of the Italian writer Italo Calvino's "Invisible Cities". The stated model in "Invisible Cities" is "The Million", remade in a twentieth-century key in W.E.T. You explore the impact of climate change on the contemporary world through a digital contest. By visualizing a floating world, where water has replaced the earth as a human habitat, you have imagined, just as Calvino did in the “Invisible cities”, the citizens of this futuristic world.

How would you describe W.E.T.?

W.e.t. is an emotional response to climate change. It's an on-going, new media piece of collaborative artwork that is looking for what humanity is going to be like under new circumstances.

You created a range of multi disciplinary artworks, what is your background?
I studied Graphic Design at Central St. Martins - it was a pretty non-conformist course, we did whatever we wanted. I spent a lot of time learning making GIFs, weird sound art google maps and learned about the Situationists from my Screen Printing Technicians. I'm from London too which i think has it's own quite punk energy as a city, it's a really empowering and beautiful place to grow up in, theres so much diversity and it's always ok to be different which really informed my view.

In W.E.T., you visualized a floating world, and the members of its community, what is your personal relationship with water?
I love water, I go swimming like 4 times a week and I collaborate with a swimwear line ! I think it's a material that i feel really connected to. It holds so much meaning, potential, colour, narrative and it's so powerful; a life giver and destroyer. I don't really know how to describe it. It's something I'm really in awe of and it's really symbolic for me of a total respect for our place in the ecosystem.

What will the evolution of the project be?
I want to build on the 'call and response' system that has been set up; continuing to have people from as many different places and backgrounds as possible fill out the questionnaires and then making works inspired by the answers. I'm also looking at making hyper local physical installations of the show like at Spazio Ridotto, where this quite global internet piece is brought into a very specific space using materials and truths from that location.

What inspires you?
The magic that's everywhere but is so often hidden.

What is your relationship with social media?
It's something that's totally unique to the times we live in - for better and worse this level of connection is a defining part of our generation. For me this makes it a really interesting tool, it's like climate change, it's a mark on my generation that we will react to and play with.

 

 

Interview by Stefania Seoni

Courtesy of the Artist
Margot Bowman
www.margotbowman.com
www.w-e-t.net

 

 

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