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With his recent exhibition at MOCA, Los Angeles &mdash; artist Josh Kline opens a portal to scenarios of the future. His narratives explore probable outcomes, from the realms of climate change to artificial intelligence, that people may reconsider their actions and influence society&rsquo;s fight for prosperity and survival.&nbsp;

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Do we want to be stuck in 1984 or fashion a brave new world?
 This will cross your mind when you encounter Josh Kline&rsquo;s installations. Viewing them is like inspecting pockets of reality in time-lapse mode. In these rare glimpses, life will flash before your eyes, and the reels won&rsquo;t be limited to your point of view. It will include multitudes of timelines and perspectives; each one will be loaded with variants of dystopia.
 Kline&rsquo;s acute sense of causality gives his work a writerly touch. It makes sense that outside the studio, he&rsquo;s writing a feature-length screenplay for a science fiction film. People compare his work to science fiction, but in his own words, &ldquo;My work isn&rsquo;t like science fiction. It is science fiction.&rdquo;
 Fresh from concluding his solo show in New York&rsquo;s Lisson Gallery, he talks about his recent exhibition, Josh Kline: Climate Change, slated at MOCA, Los Angeles from June 23, 2024 to January 5, 2025.
 &ldquo;These sculptures are about the climate crisis that we&rsquo;re living through &mdash; and will inhabit &mdash; for the rest of our lives, but they&rsquo;re also about the pandemic we just experienced. During lockdown and quarantine, I came to see the COVID-19 pandemic as a kind of dry run for the climate crisis. A preview of things to come. The pandemic was a class about the large-scale, global disruption of normal life. The climate crisis will be a massive disruption of normal life all around the world. Many of the works in the show try to make an emotional connection between the two crises, allowing viewers to understand what&rsquo;s coming through what they&rsquo;ve just experienced.&rdquo;
 Despite his American upbringing, having an immigrant Filipino mother gave him an outsider&rsquo;s perspective on America. &ldquo;There was always an international perspective in the household,&rdquo; he says. That&rsquo;s why even if Kline resides in New York, he&rsquo;s more than informed about the situation in the Philippines where typhoons and floods have become a threat to everyone&rsquo;s livelihood.
 His work resonates everywhere because it deepens empathy and prescribes a healthy dose of cynicism. &ldquo;Fiction is really interesting. Stories are a great way for people to connect with ideas and politics emotionally. It allows a viewer to come into contact with experiences that they wouldn&rsquo;t experience in their own lives,&rdquo; he says.
 But he&rsquo;s no oracle or prophet of doom. Rather, he&rsquo;s a storyteller who&rsquo;s sensitive to the changes in his environment. In this L&rsquo;Officiel interview, he warns us to gear up for climate change because when nature strikes, life as we know it will expire.

Domestic Fragility Meltdown, 2019

Adaptation video still, 2019 – 2022

Can you tell us more about your exhibition, Climate Change? My exhibition at MOCA in Los Angeles is a total installation, a series of immersive environments made up of sculpture, video, film, architecture, and lighting. The project is science fiction, set in a fictional 2050s or 2060s after catastrophic sea level rise. &nbsp; The project has three parts. The first part, which is called Deep Fragility, includes a number of sculptures that are melting, as well as sculptures of doors, made out of specific materials, that visitors move through. There are a series of works made out of wax. One of them, Domestic Fragility Meltdown is a group of typical 21st-century American suburban houses. Another, Consumer Fragility Meltdown is a group of American suburban stores. The last one, Religious Fragility Meltdown is an American Protestant church, the kind that you would also see in the suburbs here. Very typical. They&rsquo;re made out of wax that&rsquo;s cast in Caucasian skin color, the skin color of white Americans of European descent. They sit on heated tables and slowly melt over two to three weeks. The molten wax goes down a drain into a little plastic waste bin. At a certain point, there&rsquo;s nothing left on the sculpture. The wax is completely melted and the table is empty. Then the melted wax gets recycled, and new casts are placed on the heated table, and then they melt again &mdash; kind of like a video loop in sculpture.
 Deep Fragility is about the American global order melting down its own foundations. As the climate crisis accelerates in the coming years, it&rsquo;s going to knock out the pillars that support American power. Most of America&rsquo;s wealthiest cities &mdash; its most dynamic cities are on its coasts &mdash; and they&rsquo;ll all be underwater within the next fifty to seventy years. Where will America be without New York, San Francisco, Washington D.C., or Los Angeles?
 The second part of the exhibition is an installation titled Personal Responsibility that takes the form of a fictional climate refugee camp in the future. There is a series of eight tents, each of which is based on a different kind of shelter that refugees or migrants have lived in somewhere around the world. Some sculptures are based on refugee housing that the UN has used in Turkey, Germany, or France, where Syrian refugees from the Civil War have been housed. One of the tents takes the form of a car. When Americans lose their homes, they often first end up living in their cars. Another tent sculpture borrows its form from the kind of cinder block houses, that are common in countries like the Philippines, Mexico, or Morocco, where overseas foreign workers send home remittances and slowly build houses brick by brick. The surface of these tents is printed with images of the forest fires in California and poetry I wrote. Inside each tent, there are fictional video interviews with future climate refugees. Each fictional climate refugee tells a story about surviving some kind of climate disaster in the future. Underneath those stories, there&rsquo;s also a conversation about the responsibility of countries like America &mdash; and the people in them &mdash; that have done most of the damage, causing the climate crisis.
 The final part of the show is a 16-millimeter film, a short science fiction film set in a flooded New York City, where a crew of relief workers &mdash; working people &mdash; sail through the flooded city, looking out at a transformed Manhattan later in the 21st century. I know it&rsquo;s a lot to describe, but it&rsquo;s a big show and six years of work!

Personal Responsibility, 2023 – 2024

You used to have a full-time job before pursuing your art practice. What was this job, and how did this inspire you to tackle the themes of your art? I worked as an art curator for ten years for a nonprofit arts organization in New York. They have a pretty significant collection of video art from the beginning, including a lot of the canonical artists who&rsquo;ve worked in video, like Nam June Paik, Bruce Nauman, Shigeko Kubota, Dara Birnbaum, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, Carolee Schneemann, and then younger artists like Bernadette Corporation, Seth Price, and Ryan Trecartin. Working as a curator, I would organize screenings and performances and occasionally exhibitions. I didn&rsquo;t go to graduate school. I don&rsquo;t have an MFA in art, but working as a curator for a decade was my arts education. All of the artists I worked with and the videos that I watched during that time have informed the work that I make as an artist.
 Your work uses everyday objects in unconventional ways. How do you select these objects? Is there a particular technology or tool that had a significant impact on your work? I&rsquo;m interested in making art that&rsquo;s accessible and open while remaining complicated and rigorous. I use materials from everyday life, products, substances, images, and other phenomena that are instantly recognizable and packed with information. Everyone in the United States knows what Starbucks means. In the Philippines, everyone knows what Jollibee means. These brands are a shorthand for class. So are pharmaceutical products, clothing, and the faces of celebrities and politicians. When you use these things in art, they become a shorthand for more complicated phenomena. It&rsquo;s a lot like sampling in music. Musicians will sample different sounds to make new songs, but the original references come along for the ride.
 Having pursued artist work, do you think that art itself offers the same traps as, let&rsquo;s say, a corporate job? How do you cope with the drudgery of something that&rsquo;s not supposed to feel menial? I don&rsquo;t put art on a special pedestal. I think art is important. It&rsquo;s meaningful and a core part of what it means to be human. All human societies include artists who make art in relationship to their culture and society. I think that&rsquo;s valuable, but I don&rsquo;t think that say someone who takes out the trash or cooks or practices medicine is any more or less valuable than an artist. Maybe they&rsquo;re more valuable than artists. That said, in an office job or corporate job, there&rsquo;s often financial security, which I think is something that is not present when you pursue art as a profession. If you make art and you aren&rsquo;t already rich or don&rsquo;t have another source of income, you&rsquo;re always gambling. You never know if what you&rsquo;re making is going to support you.
 How did you come to terms with that? It&rsquo;s something that never ends. I haven&rsquo;t come to terms with it. It&rsquo;s just part of making art in a country like the United States where there&rsquo;s no state support for artists. You&rsquo;re either born rich, you have a job, or you sell art. Those are the only ways. I wasn&rsquo;t born rich. I started out making art while working a full-time job. Now, making art is my full-time job, which makes me one of a very fortunate few. I know that it could end at any moment. There&rsquo;s no guarantee for artists.
 You once said artificial intelligence could liberate us from drudgery. Can you define what drudgery is for you, and what&rsquo;s the opposite of it? Is it meaning or purpose? How do you envision a world free of it? Drudgery is labor that takes away human dignity. It&rsquo;s very specific. There are many kinds of work, but not all of those kinds of work take away your dignity when you do them.
 You mention science fiction a lot. Who or what were your sci-fi influences? What is it about these works that transformed your worldview? Most of the art I saw as I was coming of age as an artist was about the past. Some of it was about the present. A decade ago, I realized that art could be about the future in the same way that literature, film, or television can. In the same way that literature can be about any time, I realized that art could also be about any time. In terms of influence from science fiction, I look to writers like Kim Stanley Robinson, Octavia Butler, and Ursula K. Le Guin. These science fiction authors build large, complex worlds but also focus on individuals and political struggle, exploring a range of political, economic, and social issues, as well as where our societies might go in the future.

Desperation, 2024

Disinformation, 2023

Your work is very speculative. Don&rsquo;t you get anxiety from thinking about the future since it&rsquo;s the opposite of the popular philosophy of mindfulness and staying in the present moment?&nbsp; It never would have occurred to me to think of science fiction as the opposite of mindfulness. I also don&rsquo;t subscribe to that philosophy. For me, thinking about the future is important because it&rsquo;s where we&rsquo;re going to live. It&rsquo;s where we&rsquo;re going to spend the rest of our lives. If you have children, it&rsquo;s where those children will spend their lives. A question that everyone needs to ask is what kind of future do you want to live in? Considering how quickly technology is changing our world, for good and for ill, this should inform the decisions that you make in your life &mdash; both the personal decisions that you make as an individual and the political decisions you choose as a citizen.
 Are we living in a dystopian society? There&rsquo;s this famous quote of William Gibson, who wrote Neuromancer: &ldquo;The future is already here &mdash; it&rsquo;s just not very evenly distributed.&rdquo; You could say the same thing about dystopia. I don&rsquo;t feel like I&rsquo;m living in a dystopia in my apartment right now, but then when I walk on the streets, and there are people who are homeless on the streets of New York, sleeping on the sidewalk, I would say they&rsquo;re living in a dystopia. I was just in Los Angeles for a month installing my show at MOCA, and I stayed in downtown Los Angeles which is full of unhoused people who are addicted to opiates and fentanyl, passed out on the sidewalks everywhere. Nearby, there were huge homeless encampments of tents &mdash; and this is in the second largest city in the world&rsquo;s richest country. Los Angeles is also full of wealthy people who live opulent lives in mansions with enormous pools and servants. They buy $30 smoothies at the grocery store. That&rsquo;s dystopia. Forty years ago, if you set a sci-fi film in a setting like today&rsquo;s LA, it would absolutely be called a dystopia. Manila is dystopian in a similar way. When you&rsquo;re in Makati &mdash; it feels just like Los Angeles or Miami or Honolulu or Singapore &mdash; but when you leave Makati, there are massive slums. You have this massive population of desperate people, struggling to get by while other people are riding around above in helicopters.
 Why do you think that authoritarian regimes are the consequence of automation? If you look at the rise of Trump or so many right-wing nationalists in the industrialized north &mdash; in places like France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, or the United States &mdash; they have all experienced industrial automation and the offshoring of manufacturing and factory jobs. This transition wiped out a lot of middle class working people without providing a safety net for the workers, leaving them to fend for themselves. Center left and center right political parties failed them over and over again and now many of these people vote for Donald Trump or his European equivalents. If government doesn&rsquo;t solve problems and the people are suffering and desperate, they start looking for a strongman (or woman) to solve their problems. The rise of the Nazis in Germany was a direct result of the Great Depression. With automation and AI, we should look at the next 10 to 20 years. Middle classes in the global north are going to lose many of their jobs to AI. What is that going to do to their politics? In a country like the Philippines, there&rsquo;s a growing middle class that has been making a living working in call centers. When all of those people are replaced by AI, what are they going to do and what is that going to do with their politics?
 Do you visit the Philippines often and have you ever experienced the typhoons? What&rsquo;s your opinion about climate change in relation to places like the Philippines that are already facing its consequences? I was there right before the pandemic and in 2018. Growing up in the 80s, it was really expensive for my family to go to the Philippines, so we only went a couple times to visit my grandparents. I&rsquo;m trying to go more often &mdash; though definitely in the dry season! I do worry that travel may not be so easy in the future.
 Why do you think will it be more difficult to travel in the future? Things will get worse with the climate crisis and more drastic steps are going to have to be taken to mitigate its consequences. In the future, long-haul flights, say, between North America&rsquo;s East Coast and Southeast Asia will be hard &mdash; probably much, much more expensive. I don&rsquo;t take travel for granted anymore. In the pandemic, I didn&rsquo;t leave New York City for about a year and a half. I went from being on a plane every month to not leaving the city for almost sixteen months. It&rsquo;s predicted that the oceans are going to rise by an average of a foot (30cm) by 2050. The Philippines will be hit hard. There will be more and more flooding, and at a certain point, the flooding won&rsquo;t go away. When the sea levels really go up, that will be the end of the world&rsquo;s beaches, and it will be hard for the Philippines, where tourism is a big part of the economy. The last time I was in the Philippines, I went snorkeling, and there was endless bleached-out coral.
 What do you hope viewers take away from your work especially when dealing with complex themes like automation and surveillance? I hope it provokes questions about what kind of future and what kind of world we want to live in. What kind of rights do you want to have? I don&rsquo;t think automation is necessarily a bad thing; it&rsquo;s about how it&rsquo;s used, like going back to this idea of drudgery &mdash; there&rsquo;s a lot of truly miserable work that makes people deeply unhappy. Automation promises the elimination of that kind of work. It also promises a world without scarcity. If robots are making everything we need, and everyone has access to it, there&rsquo;s the possibility of utopia.
 Do you think a utopia could work? If people want it, we could have better and more human societies. People are going to have to fight for it in the same way that they&rsquo;ve had to fight for democracy, for civil rights, for women&rsquo;s rights, for the rights of marginalized people. Like dystopia, the building blocks for utopian societies are already here, in certain places, distributed unevenly. Scandinavian countries have an incredible egalitarian social welfare system. In Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Iceland, they all get free education and don&rsquo;t have to worry about health care. If they lose their jobs, there&rsquo;s a safety net to take care of them. All parents &mdash; mothers and fathers &mdash; get generous parental leave and there&rsquo;s abundant childcare so everyone can pursue their careers. They have a society that's built to support families.&nbsp;

Patriotism, 2023

A question that everyone needs to ask is what kind of future do you want to live in?

Artist Josh Kline Makes Us Remember the Future with His MOCA Exhibition, Climate Change

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