Marine Tanguy explores the sinister and heartening aspects of your visual landscape

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Did you know that the average person encounters 10,000 commercial images in a day? That neighborhoods where people have lower incomes tend to have more advertisements for unhealthy foods and have more stores selling and advertising commercial tobacco? That the majority of images we see of the African continent are mostly from Western sources? This is some of what I’ve learned from the book, The Digital Detox, by Marine Tanguy, who is my guest in this episode.

Manufactured visuals surround us everywhere we go, offline and online, and if we aren’t vigilant, it is almost impossible not to be overstimulated and manipulated from when we wake to when we sleep. Naomi Klein said in an interview recently something that’s stayed with me, that “we’ve become machine food!” That visual of human machine food stuck in my mind while reading the Marine’s book. Her book is essentially  a guide on how not to become machine food. And according to Marine, a key to that is art, which helps us activate our critical thinking and our imagination, while also being a medicine for our spirits.

Marine is CEO of MTArt Agency, a talent agency for artists. She has held high profile positions in the art world since she was 21, starting as a gallery manager of  the Outsider's Gallery in London, which was the first to showcase the work of Banksy, and she was on a Forbes 30 under 30 Art & Culture list.

The thread that runs through The Heart Gallery podcast is that art and stories are what bring us together and move our society forward into a more caring future. So of course I was so excited to talk to Marine. Marine’s mission is to bring art out of what we think of traditional art spaces - galleries, theaters, museums, fancy places - and into the heart of society, art representative of everyone and for all. That is a mission we can all get behind. I hope you enjoy listening to Marine Tanguy.

Homework from Marine: "Take a couple of minutes to close your eyes and think, "what have I seen today?" Try to understand how what you saw made you feel. This will help you to start to be aware of the impact that images have on you."

Mentioned:
- The Imagination Muscle by Albert Read
- Humankind: A Hopeful History by Rutger Bregman
- "The media is the message" - here's a great article about Marshall McLuhan, Neil Postman, Jenny Odell and others
- The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel van der Kolk

Connect:
- Marine instagram
- MTArt instagram
- Rebeka instagram
- The Heart Gallery socials
- Episode blog post

Credits:
Samuel Cunningham for podcast editing, Cosmo Sheldrake for use of his song Pelicans We, podcast art by me, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer.

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Transcript:

Intro

Did you know that the average person encounters 10,000 commercial images in a day? That neighborhoods where people have lower incomes tend to have more advertisements for unhealthy foods and more stores sell and advertise commercial tobacco? That the majority of images we see of the African continent are mostly from Western sources? This is some of what I’ve learned from the book, The Digital Detox, by Marine Tanguy, who is my guest today. 

Manufactured visuals surround us everywhere we go, offline and online, and if we aren’t vigilant, it is almost impossible not to be overstimulated and manipulated from when we wake to when we sleep. Naomi Klein said in an interview recently something that’s stayed with me, that “we’ve become machine food!” and urges us not to become machine food. That visual of human machine food stuck in my mind while reading the Marine’s book. This book is essentially  a guide on how not to become machine food. And according to Marine, a key to that is art, which helps us activate our critical thinking and our imagination, while also being a medicine for our spirits. Marine is CEO of MTArt Agency, a talent agency for artists. She has held high profile positions in the art world since she was 21, starting as a gallery manager of  the Outsider's Gallery in London, which was the first to showcase the work of Banksy, and she was on a Forbes 30 under 30 Art & Culture list.

This is the The Heart Gallery podcast where I talk with artists and others creatively confronting the issues of our time, helping us create deeper relationships with other inhabitants of this planetary home, and inspiring compelling visions of the future. I am your host Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer, I am an artist, I work as a creative strategist and facilitator with organizations like the Red Cross and Red Crescent movement, and I am the creator and host of this podcast. 

The belief that underscores all that I do is that art and stories are what bring us together and move our society forward into a more caring future. So of course I was so excited to talk to Marine. Marine’s mission is to bring art out of what we think of traditional art spaces - galleries, theaters, museums, fancy places - and into the heart of society, art representative of everyone and for all. That is a mission I can get behind. I hope you enjoy listening to Marine Tanguy.

Interview

Marine Tanguy (00:00.59)

Yeah.

Rebeka (00:00.857)

And just so we get that out of the way, it's always like a funny little awkward moment. But we're recording now and thank you so much for being here. It's so lovely to see you.

Marine Tanguy (00:10.798)

Thank you for having me.

Rebeka (00:12.825)

Marine, I came up with this podcast idea about, I don't know, a year and a half ago, but it's sort of been brewing for years. I went back in my Google Drive recently and I found some spreadsheets from like 2017, like where I had first podcast lists and they were like very vague and pie in the sky. But once I started to get concrete about the idea, you have been consistently the top of my list of speakers that I would like to talk to. So it's just an honor to be here with you today.

Marine Tanguy (00:39.886)

Well, it's a total pleasure. Thank you so much.

Rebeka (00:43.321)

And I just off the top, I want to say for all the listeners that you work with artists and you help artists advance their career. You put artists out into the world in really wonderful ways and we're going to get into that. But I want people to understand that you, your work is relevant to not just artists, that you're doing a lot of really cool things that touch everybody's lives. And your book is one of those things, but so many initiatives that you were doing before the book.

And so for everyone who's thinking like, oh, an artist agency, like what does this have to do with my life? Please stay tuned. I think you'll find that Maureen has a lot to say. Maureen, to start, I wonder if you could speak about imagination and about your imagination specifically, and just thinking about what is the future? What is the world that you in your mind are striving to build towards?

Marine Tanguy (01:37.614)

Yeah, I mean I cannot answer that question without plugging in the book of a friend, Albert Reed.

who talks about imagination as a muscle because it just got published last year and when I met him last summer, we had the most interesting conversation about imagination. And it was very much on, you know, especially being confronted nonstop with distractions, whether that's through our screens, whether it's through advertising, actually the loss of imagination to some extent that we have in as a society. So I feel a duty to kind of refer him within this conversation. I feel that I have nurtured my imagination.

since I was a little kid. At first it wasn't conscious because I come from a tiny place off the west coast of France and the truth is that being five at school of the same age you had a lot of time to kill and and ultimately imagination comes from also having all that space and I had a lot of space whether I had space because I was surrounded by nature but I also had space literally with time there was very little distraction in how I was brought up.

up, which very much kind of let my imagination go freely. I also have been very lucky throughout the years, whether it's through professors or teachers or my grandparents to be and my mother to be encouraged to continue to develop my imagination. There was a sense that this was valuable. It was something that was valuable within this group of people. And of course, there was also people who were dismissive of it. But at large, I had a lot of encouragement.

on being someone that was able to be creative, to be able to imagine and visualize things quite differently. So I was quite encouraged throughout. I think it's always so surreal when you've developed that capacity to imagine or to be creative and to make it a job and a career, especially when it's something that was almost quite childlike at the start. And now obviously as an adult, it's become a fast growing company.

Marine Tanguy (03:44.128)

and so much more that we'll discuss today. So I feel very lucky and very in tune with the child I was because I'm one of the fortunate people who happens to have evolved but still retain the same quality from the child to the adult.

Rebeka (04:02.969)

How was that imagination encouraged in you when you were younger by all these wonderful family members?

Marine Tanguy (04:07.95)

So in many different ways, it's actually, sadly, my granny just passed away last month and that's okay. I mean, she's, you know, grieving, it comes in all flux of colors and emotions, so it takes a little while, but she is, she was 101 and an incredible woman and she handled, so I was handled this weekend because I was back home a...

Rebeka (04:14.169)

I'm so sorry.

Rebeka (04:24.153)

Wow.

Marine Tanguy (04:32.43)

big folder of everything she had kept of my childhood. So it's quite a fresh question, therefore. And what's interesting is she didn't just highlight...

whether it's like press articles or achievements, magazine cover. In fact, there was very little of that in the folder. It was my mistakes. It was the little stories I had imagined really young. It was the poems I had written. It was when I was saying I was embarrassed in certain things. It's a very different image to the one that you would think of yourself through those years. And I think that response to your question of,

I had people who first of all gave me room to fail and make mistakes and and Being creative comes with a lot of that, you know You come up with ideas, but some of them works out some of them fell miserably and and clearly as I kind of was reviewing this folder I I had grandparents who gave me a lot of room to evolve as a person and try things out and and

Yeah, even if that meant that we would not be successful or it would not lead to anything. So I just, I didn't have any pressure for that to be absolutely must succeed and must lead to something, which is amazing. I think teachers wise, I struggled a lot with doing exactly what the exercise was. And it wasn't, I was not, you know, I was on a, I was not trying to rebel. I was, it was not a,

provocation, my brain generally didn't think that way. My brain was constantly trying to think, how can I improve, was being asked. How can I add more or how can I add more value or how can I tweak it? So it's, some teachers obviously saw it as simply I was incompetent and couldn't respond to the simple question that was being asked. But luckily quite a few of them so that I had plenty to give on.

Rebeka (06:30.169)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (06:37.2)

imagination, creativity, philosophy, and I was able to have a good critical thinking around the exercise. And so I had a couple of teachers who published a few of my written pieces, and I had quite a few encouragements, which actually are still in this folder this weekend. And I had completely forgotten about a couple of philosophy professors moving forward. So it's basically for giving you room for being who you are and allowing you the space.

to have all the highs and lows that you're trying to build it, which I think was very fortunate.

Rebeka (07:14.041)

Wow, that's such a good crash course in parenting in general. And wow, what a time capsule. I wonder if you saw anything that was really surprising or shocking to you that you'd maybe forgotten about.

Marine Tanguy (07:25.742)

Yes, I mean plenty is the answer because your memory tricks you on a daily basis, right? It's a big part of the book that I wrote where...

your subconscious is constantly tricking you. So the answer is yes, absolutely. You have forgotten a lot of things. I think it's always, and for anyone listening who is in that place, I felt in a lot of those phases when I was trialing things, but also failing, I felt that I was a mess. And this kind of messy, quite useless idea of myself around this timing was what was so lovely for her to have kept all those moments is for me at 34,

to read that letter or that touching exchange of that 19 years old and actually be very kind to her for what she's going through and what she's trying to crack. And you will not be that kind because your memories will be one of either shame or anxiety or the fact that you didn't succeed to do something was actually many years later, you'll be so much kinder. Because first of all, you realize how young you were, but also second, you...

you realize it was part of it. So I'm really glad she kept it. There was a very touching email from my philosophy professor that I had completely forgotten he had emailed me when I moved from France to the UK. And yeah, actually just very touching words. But what I love so much is that she didn't keep the perfection. She didn't keep like, yeah, it was just words, wrong phases or decisions that were

Rebeka (09:03.673)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (09:04.112)

hard to make at the time and rests were difficult to take and that's what she very much had preserved.

Rebeka (09:10.841)

She must have been so proud of you, no doubt. And I want to touch on one other thing, likely stemming from your childhood. I heard you in a, excuse me, I heard you in an interview recently talking about one of your artists, Raven D. Clark. And I think I mentioned to you via instant message or wherever it was, that I was just in Alabama and I had a chance to see her group of sculptures, five sculptures, the three groupings.

at this incredible sculpture park that's just, it just opened I think three days before I was there. And thanks to social media, I knew that her pieces were featured. I knew that she was one of the artists you work with. What I didn't know was just how staggering these pieces are. And I don't think you've been to Alabama yet, have you?

Marine Tanguy (10:01.07)

So I'm going in June. So I was about to say, you've seen it before me, but I literally can't wait. It's one of the most meaningful projects that we've done this year.

Rebeka (10:08.633)

Oh, I'm so excited to talk about it with you. And Raven's pieces are just, I mean, you probably like, you probably have a really good sense of where they are, how they look, but it's shocking, right? Like you walk into the park and immediately you understand that you've stepped into another environment. Like it just, it feels like you're stepping into a sacred place and her pieces are right there. Like they're, they're what you see coming. Like there's this big Simone Lee, but her pieces are.

are the welcoming pieces of the experience and it's just really special. That's a little bit of a digression and I can't wait for you to talk about them, but you're speaking about Raven and you were talking about how with this type of project, and I know this is a really significant project for her and for you, but that you feel this anger. And you were saying that it's not an anger that you feel towards any particular person, but you have an anger that these narratives haven't been told yet.

and that certain marginalized groups, people from different parts of the world, people that might have been overlooked in the past, are finally starting to get the platforms that they should have. But you feel this anger that this hasn't happened yet, but sort of like a hopeful anger that it's starting to move. And I wonder if you can speak about what that anger is. Like, what is this fire in the belly that you have?

Marine Tanguy (11:31.182)

Yep.

It's a very good point. And I think because it nicely leads also on the panel with my granny. So my granny was a resident during the war, war II. And so I was raised by two primary teachers who ultimately are socialists and therefore fairness is incredibly important in the social system. And therefore, resident grandparents who had both fought during the war. So my granddad went to the UK and was again deported back in France. And granny was a resident back on the island.

So film, the sense of fairness, equality and fighting for things is therefore, yeah, I was exposed to it by the second I was born. And it's something that is exactly why I'm comfortable to call it anger because...

It is not an anger on, it's quite the opposite of wanting to go at war with someone, of wanting to be violent with someone or wanting to aggress someone. It's actually the total opposite. It's one that, it's fueling you to make sure that, you know, the society that you leave behind is, hopefully has improved. And there's a lot, you know, there's a great book on this called A Hopeful History of Humankind that shows that actually it is going that way. I know the media right now don't feel that way, but overall,

is very much in that direction. And I think with the company that we've built nine years ago, we feel very passionate that the art world is difficult to access, both in terms of the artists, but in terms of the audiences. What that means is very hard for Raven D. Clarke to exist from a working class background and to get to do incredible projects out of age if it wasn't for a system like ours. And similarly, you know, many people feel they cannot take part in the visual culture they live in.

Marine Tanguy (13:20.528)

They feel imposed what to look at, everything they can shape, what they would like to see. We are artist driven, but we are also audiences driven. And that comes back to the idea of equality on, we want everyone to feel represented. We want every single missing visual stories to be included. And, you know, there's plenty of works because 97 % of the public sculptures and public art projects you see on your street are done by men. And they're mostly on the street.

Rebeka (13:22.009)

Right.

Marine Tanguy (13:50.4)

pedestals looking incredibly intimidating. Women are four times more likely to be in revealing clothing, even when it's advertising for snacks in your advertising space. There's barely 2 % of characters in the advertising space with disabilities. Gaming or AI is not representative at large of the population either. So it's the visual space that we live in deeply need participation from the audiences and demand from audiences at large for new narrative. But also, there's

therefore needs new artistic voices working to drive these new visual stories.

Rebeka (14:26.425)

Yeah, definitely. And that's a great place to start to talk about empty art. Where what is empty art? And just for an audience who maybe doesn't understand the art world super well, I mean, who understands the art world, right? I think that's one of the things that you're working around is that the art world is something that's quite difficult for people to understand, right? So can you talk about what the agency is and how it's doing something very different for artists and

how you're also touching the lives of non -artists through the work of the agency.

Marine Tanguy (14:58.382)

Yeah, it's a tradition.

The art world is, I am a painter and I sell a work of art on, you know, an exhibition onto a wall and someone is buying that painting. We feel that an artist can do so much more than that. So I spoke briefly on visual culture earlier and the idea that we're in a very visual world and they evolve in one. But every single day you're consuming 10 ,000 images. That's enormous. On 99 % of those images are commercial, only 1 % of it is art. There's loads of visual

with that because commercial imagery is here to make you quite dissatisfied with life and therefore quite mentally unhappy. Art does the total opposite. Art ultimately increases your wellness, opens you up to other people and new ideas as well. So first is very much replacing the artist, the art in the center of society. So it's not just your painters selling the works on the wall, it is integrating public art projects in the center of your cities, making sure artists collaborate

Rebeka (15:35.481)

Sure.

Marine Tanguy (15:59.936)

with movies or digital productions or brand collaborations. So actually it's shifting art as something that is nice to see every few months if you're in the privileged categories to your everyday. And every day you are looking at things. And I guess the dream for me is that you will be looking at tons more art than the current amount that you're seeing today, which realistically you're more likely to see an ad of Coca -Cola that you are to see an artwork as you're walking around your streets right now. So it is shifting.

take that exposure. I don't want to ban commerce, but I feel...

We are overly targeted by a type of content and ultimately I want to shift that onto more artistic content. MC Art is built on this and what's really nice therefore is not only have we been able to support many incredible artists but again we've been able to open up the audiences of who gets to enter our sector at quite a large scale. When we kicked off the World Cup with art a year and a half ago that's five billion views which

at the sector level, when you know that most of your museums can't have a million to a million food for Big Macs a year. That's again an enormous shift in terms of the urgences.

Rebeka (17:17.945)

Yes, for sure. And so you came up with this model and it's quite different from what artists have access to typically. Like what is the option for most artists who are maybe working on visual arts outside of what you've created?

Marine Tanguy (17:31.502)

Traditionally, you would make works in your studio quietly on your own and then for the best, the gallery would then exhibit them. The gallery in itself is like a retail where...

Rebeka (17:36.633)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (17:44.59)

You know, sometimes people come in, sometimes people come out. Like, we come to people. We don't want to wait until you come to us. We want that as you get up in the morning, you interact with it on the digitals, then actually you see it on your way to work and commute and it's on the streets. And then again, you'll encounter it through a brand partnerships, also something that you're watching. But the big difference is again, that we will want to come where you are.

Rebeka (17:50.137)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (18:12.046)

more than having you come to us. And traditionally you've had to come to us and especially in a sector that many people feel they cannot enter galleries, they cannot enter museums, it means that many people haven't felt they could actually walk into these buildings. We do the opposite, we are coming to them so they don't have to come to us.

Rebeka (18:31.641)

Right, and you saw this model when you were in Los Angeles, right? Like you saw a talent agency and you made this connection. You're working in an art gallery, your own art gallery at the time, and you made the connection that this could be something that could be fused.

Marine Tanguy (18:44.59)

Yeah, counted -wise, Los Angeles basically...

rules a lot of what we consume every day content -wise, in terms of celebrity culture, in terms of advertising and movies. And I just felt I want visual artists to have that voice, to have that microphone almost under their voice, and to have the amplification of audiences, but also to have many more opportunities than they have currently. And I was co -running a gallery that was my own gallery at the time. So I dropped out of the Gary model and built this business model.

Rebeka (18:51.563)

Of course.

Marine Tanguy (19:18.56)

and that was nine years ago.

Rebeka (19:22.073)

Oh, incredible. Incredible. And this is the perfect place to start talking about the book. And I wonder, is the book, which just came out just a couple weeks ago, I'm so lucky to be talking to you so early in the life of the book. I mean, I guess it was alive for a long time, right? But is this book, The Digital Detox, is it a part of a larger strategy to start to shift the public perception around how people perceive art in their environments?

Marine Tanguy (19:49.934)

Yeah, I felt...

The change we want to make cannot just happen at a business level. Ultimately, we would like visual culture and the arts to reach everyone. It's a place where everyone feels they can take part in it. For this to happen, there's a lot of things to do. You need awareness at large of how visuals shape you. For most people, visuals feel quite inoffensive and quite superficial and quite light.

had to show and prove that actually for most of what we talk about today someone will remember about 20 percent but visuals remember 60 percent and you store them in your subconscious and in very much shape the wishes of desires everything that you're going to basically become are shaped through what you're looking at daily and that's what advertising loves it and since the 1920s they know how to create new desires using those visuals so awareness on the power of visuals was

first. Second is 65 % of us are visual learners.

And it was important to remind people that actually you can speak that language. You don't just have to look at it and be imposed what you look at. You can interact, engage, reshape, which leads to the third part on how do you participate in your visual culture? And there are loads of little daily actions that you can take that will significantly shift the visual world that we're in. That's bigger than the business in a sense because a business can only answer at a certain level. It creates revenues or portraites, disrupts some kind of pattern,

Marine Tanguy (21:27.744)

dynamics.

But we're also talking of the need of education and we're also talking of the need of new policies, of regulations and exposures to culture. So it's bigger, the change that we want to bring out to the world. So the book is a step again, forward more change that we want to see. For me, it's incredible as a founder because this book is exactly what me as a child saw the world as I wanted. Of course, it's better articulated than me as a child, but it is

Rebeka (21:58.553)

Meh.

Marine Tanguy (21:59.072)

and

It's completely aligned with how I felt as a child and how I wanted things to change for the better in terms of exposure to the arts in our visual world. So it feels such a perfect alignment. And I think being the first B Corp in the art world and wanting to drive change as a company, it's very meaningful for people to see that the vision is much bigger than the business. And actually, it's not just that.

Rebeka (22:28.057)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (22:30.416)

If we become successful, the business and the artist wins. But I think as a society at large, we win from that kind of businesses ultimately becoming successful. So it was important to explain the vision at large.

Rebeka (22:43.865)

Yeah, and you do that so well. And I'd love to talk about some of the activities, exercises that you have in there. I'd love also you talking about displacing commercial art. I mean, it seems so incredibly necessary to me. It's funny being in Alabama. We're driving through these rural landscapes. I was doing an interview with one of the Giesbend quilters. And so we had a chance to drive down a lot of Alabama roads. And in the South, I forgot, you are just...

bombarded with the most bizarre billboards all the time, right? And I live here in Washington, DC, and it's a different kind of commercial assault that you might see. Actually quite a lot less, I think. I'm not sure, but I think Washington, DC might have quite a lot of regulations around the visual environments. I know that there are regulations about the height of buildings because they want the monuments to be visible from almost any part of the city.

And I do feel like it's just so much less than you would see in a place like New York City. So I do wonder who's done some pretty good work in DC.

Marine Tanguy (23:44.398)

There's a few numbers worth knowing, is that in the US there are 370 ,000 billboards with 15 ,000 new ones every year. So actually the increase is significant.

Rebeka (23:54.041)

Wow.

Marine Tanguy (23:56.782)

But the part I always want to highlight is social inequalities when it comes to who gets to see most your 10 ,000 imagery. Because you're two to four times more likely in a low income neighborhood in the US to be exposed to a high density of commercial imagery than you are if you're in a privileged neighborhood. In the UK, it's the same where four out of five billboards are in working class areas, so you're low income as well. So that's what I find even more pressing is that we know the mental health standards.

Rebeka (24:24.953)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (24:26.736)

that high density of commercial imagery do, but we're also choosing to harm your most vulnerable people in society. And that again, the book is about equality. It's about making sure that the visual environment we see is also equalized because I live in a very lovely privileged neighborhood in London. My kids do not grow up with that high density of commercial imagery, but that would make them quite different as people. And that is a problem at large on

Rebeka (24:39.161)

Yeah.

Rebeka (24:53.369)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (24:56.656)

social inequalities and exposure to who gets to see what they want. And a reminder that therefore, the more privileged you are as a kid, the more you will be exposed to the arts and culture, whether it's through school or whether it's your background. So on top of this, you will have even more exposure to the arts on the other side and less exposure to a high density of commercial images. So there's a deep inequality.

Rebeka (25:18.521)

And can you speak about the types of, maybe some of the different types of messaging that you've seen in these different socioeconomic spaces? Like just going South, for example, like you see so many anti -abortion ads and so many billboards about religion and just like a lot of like really, I guess shame is at the root of a lot of advertising, but it felt really heavy. Like every time I go to the South, it feels very heavy. Can you talk about some of the neighborhood differences you've observed?

Marine Tanguy (25:46.606)

I feel, first of all...

It's worth knowing that visual biases sell. They sell whether you click on them on social media, whether you click on a clickbait article or whether you make ads or political ads with it. What I call visual biases is, I just did a little video on Instagram yesterday because I'm always taking pictures on the streets of London and you had this random snack advert when the woman is half -closed, you know. It doesn't make any sense because there's obviously not quite

to the chocolate bar. But it's again, constantly reinforcing that women are an object. So you put them, yeah, they are, you put them next to a sponge or a snack or a car and off you go. That's the advert, right? And there's no direct correlation. So even without going into extremes of targeting of ads,

Rebeka (26:27.737)

A snack.

Rebeka (26:34.457)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (26:41.23)

there will be, it will be a subliminal messages of who is in power in society, what are the current power dynamics, and what are the biases against certain groups of people. Your most prominent biases are race, religion, age, social economics, and gender. You know, white characters are, castly depicted as smarter than characters of color. So again, at a subliminal level,

you would think, oh, they're smarter. And it will be done through little tweaks. If you just look at this image, it's every time quite settled, but it's reinforcing existing power dynamics. And that's the reason for me it's essential.

to not look at it as an image, but to look at it as basically power dynamics are constantly enforced on us and telling us this is your place within society and this is where you should stay in it. And that's reinforced through so many different ways of visuals and being aware of it. Because I mentioned that snack bar, but actually when you start thinking about it, it's completely ridiculous. It doesn't make any sense. So just stopping for a fraction of a second, opening your eyes and think, hold on, this advert,

Makes no sense or always very challenging or actually problematic and calling it off for that Because we haven't been educated to speak the visual language. We feel we can't speak about it and We think oh, it's a question of taste or it's a question of somebody else must have known better So it's developing also vocabulary and tool kits to just call it off and just say this is problematic as an image Because it's otherwise you could have words and it's the same with women, right? You could have loads of

words about us being empowered as women, but if we constantly reinforced that my core duty is to sell snack in a half -revealed dress, you know, that I'm going to feel the anxiety of the dichotomy of the words are being told, you can do it all, and the images are being served, which are very different. And everything feels like this, where it's the same on a panel this evening for...

Marine Tanguy (28:46.606)

on climate change. And that's the same way we told we need to change, but then all the images we look at tell us, but you must consume more. So that dichotomy of messaging is also creating deep anxiety in us because actually it's not aligned in the same way that you mentioned the project of Raven DeClarque. But how incredible will it be that all this missing stories will be reintegrated in our city space? You're likely to think, to feel quite differently if you start your day,

with historical missing stories and there's tons of missing stories. There's also missing stories of age, of social classes, it's endless. But I think the empathy levels will be much higher. The way you encounter your space will feel also much more different. So it's important to rethink what kind of visual stories are we saying about ourselves? What kind of visual storytelling we want to support? Which ones do we actually want to call out? Because not only does it not make us feel great, but it's actually harming a certain group of people in a kind of way.

basis who is already at a vulnerable state.

Rebeka (29:52.409)

Totally. And how has this changed over time? Because I think back from what I've seen in TV and movies, which is of course another type of story, from past times, and it seems like we have been being fed these types of harmful narratives for decades, right? Decades and decades and decades, probably starting with the Mad Men era, right? The start of advertising. Have you tracked how advertising has evolved over time?

Marine Tanguy (30:18.99)

Yeah, I feel it all stems back from the 1920s where the Fros uncle, Barney's in the US, was ultimately thought, how can we help large corporations to scale by making people feel they don't need things, they desire things. The reason I mentioned female empowerment is that there's a very dark story about smoking that I'm sure you know that...

Basically the tobacco sector appealed to him saying we're losing half of our market because only men are smoking and it's not well perceived for women to smoke and this is when they came up with the idea that if they got a couple of suffragettes to basically speak to kind of be on the streets and smoke as they're protesting then smoking will become associated with female empowerment at a subliminal level.

Rebeka (30:48.601)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (31:11.566)

And then they could compete, basically they could have the whole market of women on top of men. It was usually successful. They made sure that all the journalists photographed the suffragettes smoking and then they gained used tractions. And I think here, this is something that's really sad when...

Rebeka (31:11.577)

Yeah.

Rebeka (31:25.241)

Oh my God.

Marine Tanguy (31:30.67)

it's going against female empowerment, it's completely manipulating at the heart through behavior, through imagery, and basically countering what women are trying to do. And this has happened multiple times. And that was done with incredibly smart psychologists. I think, again, a lot of what I discuss in the book is the psychology of images and it's understanding that psychology, it's understanding, again, it's not just a picture of a woman smoking because otherwise,

would not have triggered this movement of women smoking in movies and everywhere as a statement. This is much more than a picture. As human beings, we want to belong to communities, we want to be loved and liked, and we would always go towards what we have been told is the right thing to do. And you know, you have kids like me where...

Rebeka (32:06.553)

Right.

Marine Tanguy (32:21.262)

Kids don't mimic. They don't ask to be told what to do. They do exactly the same behaviors as you. So it's the same with images. If you're constantly told this person on the pedestal is acting that way visually, you're going copy. So we just urgently need to change what is it that we should aspire to, especially when we know that large corporations have invested a huge amount in shifting our behaviors so that we can consume more.

Rebeka (32:49.849)

That's a perfect place to talk about this wonderful activity that you have in your book about the visual landscape that we see, the visual world that we set ourselves up to see. And I have to say this part of the book was especially validating. I had this conversation, like actually randomly right before I read this book with my husband and I was telling him that I go to the pool in the mornings. I love to go swimming. And I was saying like, oh, when I go, like I have to cross.

that street like really quickly like I can't drive on the street I have to like cross the street and I get to a smaller street and then like I love to go like down this street the one that's like really curvy and has like the nice trees and there's flowers over here and then I go like down this really quiet street and then I'm at the pool and he was like that is so weird and I was thinking like is that weird and then I read your book and you were talking about how you do basically exactly that that you construct these elaborate

I guess this elaborate navigation through the world to have the visual experience that you want. And what that requires is first understanding what is your visual experience. I wonder if you could just give a taste of the book and talk about how people can start to become aware of what they're actually seeing, because you talk about how most people aren't even aware, right? Like we're just consuming passively. And then what people can start to do.

Marine Tanguy (34:11.086)

Yeah.

Yeah, the timing of the book is important because there's many ways in which you can actually shift your experience of the visual world. And exactly that example is spot on. I feel we always talk about the five people that surround you and how...

basically that you're becoming them. It's the same with visuals. In terms of what we call a visual environment, that is your laptop, your phone, your TV screen, and you commute to work or the pool or university or school of your kid, whatever this is, right? That's everything you'd look at on a daily basis. So it's little actions that we've plugged in during that visual environment. So for instance, when it comes to the streets like you mentioned it, if there's a massive comm -

streets that's really aggressive and loud in terms of colors and screens and billboard, there might be hopefully a back street. That is not the case. And just taking that back street will significantly change that experience on your morning and change again how you approach that day. So it is being aware on how you feel two or three times in the environment. By the way, this is the beauty of the book. You may love that commercial street and you may love the screens and that's totally fair. It's more, again, making sure that it's a choice.

Rebeka (35:13.305)

Totally.

Marine Tanguy (35:27.312)

and you don't just feel, I must go on that street. I think adding one or two minutes of walking because it's something that's going to make you feel deeply better, I think is worth it. And you know, I think now we're so used to just putting it in our map on our phone and just being guided. It's just worth remembering that we can take a different route.

that nothing is holding us, that we have to absolutely follow the Apple map or the Google map, you know. Second thing is on our screens. When it comes to the digital, it's being aware that again, I mean, I think specifically within the current context of global conflicts, working up at 6 a .m., brushing your teeth, being confronted with very triggering imagery is something that right now we're exposed to. We go from...

a lifestyle influencer in Dubai to a really triggering image on social media. It's worth reminding that when it came to 10 years ago, you would know as you switch on your TV for the news or open your paper that you could encounter something that was difficult to look at, but therefore your brain was prepared for that difficulty.

in that context of the 6 a .m. I brush my teeth, you just you don't expecting to be triggered. So just make sure that you're preparing yourself and that you're acknowledging that that trigger is very real because...

You know, it's like if I was literally coming at you and then shouting, this would be feel felt really aggressive. But images do the exact same. The difference is that you don't acknowledge it as such. And so you button it up. But that is a form of trauma. And like seeing that kind of images is traumatic. Of course, being on the ground is way more traumatic. But it's important to kind of remember, is there a way for me to still be exposed to information, but to make sure psychologically I'm really to access that information?

Rebeka (36:53.881)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (37:16.128)

information or that visual information. Same when it comes to all the lifestyle or advertising content, having some degree of control in a sense that it's addictive and we're all addicted to weird content. So there's, it's a safe space on that podcast, I will not judge. But I think understanding that when you do scroll,

your memory gets deactivated. It's actually, you can't even remember how long you spent on it. So that's where you can be there for hours. So just making sure that you have a timing, making sure that you have ad blockers, making sure that you're conscious that maybe that content is actually not making you feel any better. And especially if you're in a dark place, well, trying to feel, even though I have the urge to just open my phone as a mechanism, maybe in the context, I should just go for a quick walk.

because that might just make it worse. I'm not saying you will succeed every time, but it is like everything when it comes to wellness, just like being aware that this could make it significantly worse. So, it's trying and make sure that you protect yourself as much as you can. When it comes to AI imagery by 2050, 75 % of the images you look at will be generated by AI. Right now, most of the AI models are trained on existing visual biases.

Participation in this space is incredibly important. Education in this space is also incredibly important. So when it comes to gaming where...

it's not representative at large, your female, women reports to not partially connect with female characters on the games that they're playing. So it's constantly informing you that you need to demand for new types of representations. Also, depending on the brands that you buy from or the games that you're playing, try and think which visual narrative they endorse, what kind of characters they put forward. Is there one that I can go out of my way to play that is actually

Marine Tanguy (39:17.952)

more aligned with me because we think value systems in terms of words but we should think value systems in terms of images as well. Can you go a little bit the extra mile and think actually that brand is supporting a visual narrative I'm much more aligned with.

and I might want to buy that product instead. Same when it comes to gaming, same when it comes to anything in your visual environment. Is there a little tweak that you can take just to make sure that slowly but surely we put pressure on making sure that space is becoming more inclusive?

Rebeka (39:49.785)

It's so important. It's so important. And I wonder like how early can we be starting and what should the goal be? And like, what is the end of your ambition with this space? Like you talk about this David Foster Wallace quote, I think you talk about it in the book where he gave a commencement speech, I think shortly before he lost his life, very sadly.

where he talks about how a fish isn't aware of the water that it's in and you talk about how that's what you're trying to do with this book, right? Like you're trying to make people aware, like what are they? Like what is the water that they're in every day? And I think you do it so beautifully. Like what is the hope with the book?

Marine Tanguy (40:25.87)

I think the good news is a very hopeful book. I am not in a happy place whatsoever about it because if we want to access now, timing of course is pressing. Like I mentioned with the timing of the amounts of visual misinformation we also going to get through AI and other tech, but we can train our eyes to look at things and challenge what we look at. Also back on the fact that 65 % of us are visual learners, it's actually teaching visual literacy to kids. It's quite

easy and I've done that in a class of my eldest and kids respond very well. City things. Imagine this big advert like a coca -cola advert, screaming red and you are a four years old. Imagine that scale how loud and aggressive that is. So just teaching the kids on just the importance of scale like if they felt really little and and not great well that's because they have a screaming six meter on top of them and this

is incredibly overwhelming and it's important that because they can't go around just closing their eyes.

that they also have the capacity to discuss it, to say, actually, Mami, that was too much, or I didn't like that, or I just, you know, just they can express it. Same when it comes to, you know, I did little exercises to ask them, where do their eyes go? And ultimately, what do their eyes make them want to do? Just articulating this, again, for them makes them aware that what they look at leads to actions. And those actions are either behaviors that they're going to do,

to develop or insecurities are going to develop, but also biases against other people. So just constantly linking what you look at with the consequences that's going to happen on the ground is really important. I see everyone wants to start paying attention to the topic, being like, Whoa, I am addressing things differently. So this means it's not complicated. And also we read the book in a way that it's not a complicated topic. It's just, you.

Marine Tanguy (42:32.24)

have never thought about it before. So I don't think you need a PhD to master how to ultimately walk around your visual environments, you don't. And all ages, all social backgrounds can get it, but no one was put in a place where they could reflect about it.

Rebeka (42:50.489)

to see how they're being targeted. No, absolutely. And I want to talk about public art and street art. But before I pivot to that, I want to ask how you as an agency, you and your team balance the types of contracts that you go after. Because I imagine you mentioned a Coca -Cola ad. And I can imagine that having a contract with Coca -Cola could be really fantastic for one of your artists financially. But you also have so many artists doing such.

beautiful public works and I know that that's very connected to your ethos especially as a B Corp like what is the calculus that goes on with that.

Marine Tanguy (43:28.27)

Yeah, I feel definitely as a B Corp, the approach is pragmatic. We are within a system. I can't come out of that system. There's so far no alternatives as much as the discussions of them right now, there's no alternatives to our current system. So it's important to make sure that we can push our system and evolve it to the best possible condition in the meantime where alternatives are being discussed. So for us in a context of calculus,

They have for instance starting to support artists more strongly and shift their advertising away from...

your aggressive red onto, you know, whether it was female teams, whether it was art that was broadcasted. I will be supportive of this. There will be a limit to it. I think as a big company, there's certain types of company and we're really struggling to do it. And every contract will be properly looked at on the reasons why we're doing it. But as long as we're comfortable on the outcome, and we think this generally would inspire people on the ground when they see it.

we'll get them to reflect on things that we think are really important. Plus we'll start shifting the way things are done, then we're comfortable with that. We're always happy to be in every room possible. We might not always be able to contract in every room because we think sometimes it's sadly too far from our values term. But we would want to be in every room. We want to be in every conversation. I think I believe in diversity of thinking, in complexity of thoughts. I don't...

Rebeka (44:43.993)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (45:04.08)

have any black and white opinion, I don't think there's better people or worse people. We want to be again in that complexity of what that room is like and then we make decisions on what we think is for us right to do and whether we should make a project happen or not. So there's definitely loads of room for conversations and I'm pleased that therefore that large corporates, you know the advertising sector right now is gathering to understand

how they're going to start declaring watermarks on doctor demagory and to start informing people when actually this is fully doctored. I am very welcoming of that. Same with Metta saying that they're also going to have a look at this.

Again, I'm an optimist. I think if people are starting to pay attention and want to do the right thing, great. If it feels too greenwashing or just superficial and not in depth, then no. But again, I think things are definitely being discussed at the high level as we speak, which I would be encouraging of.

Rebeka (46:11.417)

Yeah, in the nine years of empty art, have there been projects that you've taken on and you regret?

Marine Tanguy (46:18.382)

No.

That is very lucky, I must say. There's been definitely been difficult situations, difficult relationships and conflicts. I think it's because that is just inherent of trying to do what we're doing and the complexity of it. No, I don't have, but I feel I am also someone that once I make the decision, I have really weighted the consequences. So I don't have, I don't live through regrets. I completely assume the full consequences.

Rebeka (46:21.689)

Yeah.

Rebeka (46:28.441)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (46:49.104)

of a decision that we've made. So yeah, there's not a single regret. I think the impact that Empty Art has done of a 300 plus projects over nine years and the amounts of art we've been able to integrate in all contexts of the amounts of artists we've been able to have the substantial. So I'm incredibly proud of what the team has done. Regrets is definitely the wrong word. I think challenges and things that we've learned from and less because that is ultimately running a business, but there's absolutely no regrets.

Rebeka (47:20.569)

I wonder like going forward into the future, I do see that we're in a shifting landscape, like where companies and corporations are being held, like a higher and higher account. I wonder where we're going. Like, I wonder if like one day you will look back and think like, we would never work with that client again, you know, and no regrets, but like onward into a different future.

Marine Tanguy (47:42.126)

Yeah, I feel in a sense it's always easier to say when you are a few years ahead because you see nine years ago no one wants to do any public art or any collaboration so I'm glad some people took the risk to do it. I have witnessed over the past nine years a significant shift for the art world to be more open.

Rebeka (47:48.313)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (48:01.166)

to welcome new agencies to do more partnerships. So because I have witnessed so much progress, I am comfortable with the fact that that progress will not be perfect because it's already significant in nine years and I'm sure in the next 10 years.

Rebeka (48:10.585)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (48:16.558)

the the scrutiny and the demand over the levels of how public art projects should be executed at will probably have gone much higher and that's a good thing and that's because it will have been more established that you actually have to make this kind of project happen so that's only natural that we would be therefore more demanding towards projects that are more accepted but nine years ago most people were not doing that so you had to be more flexible upon the execution of them.

Rebeka (48:43.993)

Yeah, no doubt. Let's talk about public art. I'm so excited about this and I love that the latter part of the book focused on public art and how to make projects happen. Have you heard of Marshall McLuhan, the medium is the message guy? He's a Canadian, what is he? Is he a philosopher? He has this phrase, the medium is the message. And his idea is that it doesn't really matter what it is, like,

Marine Tanguy (48:59.31)

There.

Marine Tanguy (49:09.294)

Love ya.

Rebeka (49:12.601)

essentially like in his, hopefully I'm not putting words in his mouth, but like that photo behind you, it doesn't matter like who that woman is, what that butterfly is, what matters is that it's a photo, like that it's conveyed via photo or it doesn't matter like what TV show you're watching, you know, whether it's the Kardashians or CNN or whatever, but the fact is like you are receiving this information via your TV screen.

Marine Tanguy (49:26.67)

blessings.

Rebeka (49:39.225)

And so public art, like art that's out there in the street, it doesn't really matter what it is that you're looking at, but the fact is that there is art that's accessible to everyone. But I bring this up because I heard you say that you don't really care about the medium. You're speaking specifically about AI, right?

Marine Tanguy (49:54.254)

I was about to say what you're saying is challenging the exact opposite of what we believe, which is really interesting, so we'll look him up.

I see medium as a tool. So I think I, again, I studied philosophy. So I always see idea philosophy first and then execution as second, which is your medium or your tools. That's how it will be executed. So the execution would never be first. It's the idea and the artistic idea and the philosophy that will be first. So I disagree that, for instance, I feel, if I watch...

a documentary by David Attenborough or Keeping Up with the Kalashians, I don't think this has the same impact on my brain. I think obviously I will research him deeply to get a make sure because I'm sure there's tons of nuances in how he's expressed it.

But I don't think the medium has the same effect because in this context, like I love watching documentaries. I'm an enormous fan of Arte, the channel, and they have this incredible documentary of a 50 minutes long that span out different, whether it's historiography or geopolitics or the arts. I feel very fulfilled at the end of that documentary. I feel...

All the images that they go for is quite moderated, so there's no shock phenomenon, is always the explanation. So I do feel that level of visual content plus information makes me incredibly fulfilled. I can't imagine that I will feel the same way, which I don't, if I was watching any form of those types of entertainment. Now, it doesn't mean that I sometimes don't, but I think that the feeling that we'll have at the end of it will be substantially different. Same when it comes to screens where...

Marine Tanguy (51:34.702)

you know, if you were walking around your streets and your billboards, because that's what I put on the cover of the book, was actually filled with art, I do think this will have a significant different impact as well. So I feel, I think tools in my head are tools and can be malleable to our executions. I agree that of course, bottom line is the screen and I don't think you should just look at a screen all day long.

But I think the visual content on that screen and the difference of it for me is really important because this is again what I kind of criticize a lot is we always talk about addiction to screens was actually saying, but 99 % of what we look on that is lifestyle or commercial. So actually it's not just an issue of that tool. It's an issue of what we can't study fed on that tool. And which I'm a big believer that content is also the problem, not just the medium, but I would look.

him up because I'm sure he's gone about it in different levels of nuances. But in my opinion, the medium is definitely flexible.

Rebeka (52:34.361)

Yeah.

I'm curious to hear back from you. But I wonder if one of his points, I don't know, I wonder if one of the points to your documentary versus reality TV versus public art might be that, like this is what you speak about with public art, right? Is that like public art is there for people. People are going to encounter it no matter what. Whereas like a documentary might be behind a paywall, it might be inaccessible, people might not have awareness. So maybe there is a connection there.

Marine Tanguy (53:03.31)

I'm sure when they film it's...

It's always in my head is like when it comes to behaviors, it's kind of figuring out again, how can art or, you know, visual content that's very meaningful or inspiring or making you feel great will be integrated in many different elements of you every day, which is public art, which is your YouTube in that case with documentary or any form of ways in which you can access that content. And the access has never been any greater. The problem is that we keep being filled with the same type of content. It's hard to make sure.

Rebeka (53:35.705)

Right.

Marine Tanguy (53:37.456)

and we shift that now that we have so much access to content. We've reshift the priorities on the content and making sure that art is a big part of that.

Rebeka (53:47.257)

So public art, you said that you've seen it advancing a lot in just the nine years that you've been working. So what do you see happening with public art now? And I'd love to speak about some specific projects that you have. I have a list. Please tell me.

Marine Tanguy (54:01.71)

I think Black Lives Matters have actually deeply helped as much obviously as it was a difficult time at what happened.

I think suddenly when you saw those sculptures being taken down, and I'm not saying that's the solution, I'm not saying the solution is to take down someone with the tags that was there, but it started up a conversation that actually suddenly people were saying, I don't want that on my street, it's my civic space, and I don't think that person should be greeting me on that pedestal as I walk around. I was really positive about this, less about the execution again, more about...

the idea that you're starting thinking the images, sculptures, everything on the streets is my space as such. I want a space that represents my value system. And that's when it gets really interesting because it goes back away from people thinking I'm this mere consumer of my city space to that's a civic space. And that's such I want, I think it's democratic and I want to have a say. So that I feel is incredibly positive. And I think has obviously fueled.

now many cities making sure that they commission sculptures that are tackling different types of topics that are more representative, that they are consulting better audiences. So it's all things that are music to my ears and that you're seeing for the past few years happening. In terms of projects, the answer is that there are plenty. I think storytelling wise, which one am I going to choose that I absolutely love? I'm going to choose...

Delphine Diallo who was on Rison Street because that was one of the first projects we did because now we have a lot of public art in many cities including London but Delphine Diallo was one of the first that we did and it just it was incredible we covered up it was 50 meters of her art she's known she's a French and you get his

Marine Tanguy (56:03.15)

photographer and she's known to basically redefine how women are portrayed. There's a great essay on the fact that women, when it comes to our experience in the city space, first of all, your city space is never designed for men, but we are either objects of desires displayed, and before obviously prostitute or a few dancers and then a few objectification there and there, but it hasn't evolved that drastically. We are still that object that's

being displayed in many different ways. In fact, there's very few scriptural sculptures of women, but boobs will be very prominent on them if you start paying attention. So it's the same, it's mostly that object. So for her to be challenging objectification of women through art on this 50 meter was incredibly meaningful because it shifts the perception again of something that's so embedded into our city space. And you know, it's also a reminder that this is not our space as such, because that just, the spiritual message will be going so much deeper.

And we just had, it was up for three years, in Regent Street, one of the most commercial streets of London, so realistically surrounded by the total opposite type of visual messaging. And we received hundreds of messages saying,

how much people realized that they were missing that, or how empowered they felt with it, or how you kind of really stopped them in their tracks as they saw it. And again, that kind of goes back to public art being a conversation and public art purely existing through that participation with people, which makes it quite a, back to kind of a democratic and civic space, makes it quite a special conversation.

Rebeka (57:43.801)

I know you got your start, one of your starts was in a gallery that focused on street art and it was called the Outsiders. And this gallery discovered Banksy, I believe, and also JR. And can you speak to street art versus public art? And whether you recommend that artists try to follow traditional routes, find partners, or whether you endorse street art?

Marine Tanguy (57:51.278)

Yeah.

Marine Tanguy (57:55.566)

Yes. Yes.

Marine Tanguy (58:02.702)

That's it.

Marine Tanguy (58:12.686)

I think street art for me is the same as Black Lives Matters in a way that obviously exists very different, but in the way, in terms of execution that...

you couldn't express yourself. So they took to the street to express themselves, which was the same that you were witnessing during Black Lives Matters, that people felt, I have been denied to express myself, so I will express myself that way. If you are, and you know that the book is very driven too, we want you to participate. The next stage for us is to help writing policies on how do we integrate that participation at large into the public art that we choose or the projects that we...

integrate onto our streets ultimately because people would want to express themselves as there's no space for them to express themselves and street artists did that brilliantly where they said actually streets belong to us in the same way they will belong to somebody else and and expression should not be solely the voice of the large corporates or the privilege or the politicians.

And when we think about it at a constitutional level, this is fully democratic, they act, they're saying, I want to be in that conversation, but there's no space for me to be in that. The fact that it's illegal is quite interesting, which is why...

I feel we've benefited usually from street artists to do that illegally so that now as a company I can do that legally. I mean, there's still a lot of work to do to make sure that there's more space for artists to express themselves in the city space. But they have made it that basically people realize that they love public art and they wanted more public art. So we are deeply grateful to the rest that they have taken, which was a huge risk for a lot of them.

Marine Tanguy (01:00:00.654)

and I'm very admirative of it. But it always goes back to actually street artists' treats in city space and democratic space. And I think that's a really important component. When it comes to the laws, I think, yes, it's illegal. And of course, I'm not saying everyone should go and tag everyone's house tomorrow.

But it's always worth remembering that laws can be changed and challenged. I think if, you know, something that I love in Lisbon is that they have left walls where people can just come and paint and express themselves. I think walls of expression is the same way that there's a speaker corner in Hyde Park where you can just stand on a pedestal and express opinions and then different people can at the same time.

Rebeka (01:00:33.849)

Yeah.

Rebeka (01:00:42.777)

Have you done it?

Marine Tanguy (01:00:45.87)

I haven't done it. I always find it fascinating. I always pass it on the bike because I don't live very far away from it. And there's always plenty of people, which means, but I think those are, this basically for me shows that democracy is very much alive. So we should not be afraid by it. We should just make sure that there's more space for it, especially in a society that now is very black and white. If someone doesn't disagree with you, you just trade away, cancel them or go against them. I think it's incredibly.

positive and healthy to have rooms for expression. So even those walls of expression could be so good for HCT that you can go and express yourself visually. I think that's a very healthy thing to do to welcome the form of visual expressions and then making sure that there are better processes for people to participate. But right now we've denied that participation. Most decisions of what we see on our streets is removed from us.

So you can't blame people for wanting to challenge it and I think it's very healthy that they want to challenge it.

Rebeka (01:01:50.329)

Yeah, absolutely. Did you ever meet Banksy?

Marine Tanguy (01:01:53.262)

We did, because Tim Lazar is my first boss.

He was the first ever dealer that worked with him and he's done incredibly well. And what I would say for Steve Lazaridis is that he's one of the first consular estate, if not the first consular estate boy from very working class background who has built an incredible empire in the art world, which again meant that he was looking at things very differently and probably why he was able to discover all those top artists and able to change things as well on that front.

Rebeka (01:02:25.945)

Two more questions, Marine. You're speaking on a panel tonight about climate and art. And you mentioned earlier that so much of the climate messaging that we have is that we need to change, but also consume, consume, consume. And I would add a third one to that, that it's too late, right? And we hear a lot of non -visual messaging about it's too late, right? Like tipping points, like disasters everywhere, accelerating, all of that. And then we see the visuals that accompany it, like fires and...

crashing glaciers and people in horrible heat waves and so on and so forth. It doesn't end. So can you just speak a little bit to what you're encouraged by in the realm of climate and visuals?

Marine Tanguy (01:03:09.166)

Yeah, so I think you actually put the finger exactly on what I feel is problematic when it comes to climate change. And I was having that conversation at a dinner last night with Jane, who is also a strong advocate of changing that storytelling in climate change. And I was saying that it's all through shock right now. So when there's a fire, when there's a storm, the pictures that the journalists...

are choosing the angle that makes it look very dramatic. As I'm sure you know with photography, and again, the importance of visual literacy, is that you can shoot something and make it look much bigger than it is, or much more dramatic than it is. When it comes to making it shocking, it's going to stop you in your tracks, and you'll have a few people that will be like, oh my god, I must act now.

But most people will feel deeply triggered, overwhelmed or will go numb. And that's a problem psychologically with shock is that it just hits you, but because it feels so big, you think, oh my God, I just, I can't act, I can't do anything about it. It's too big. Plus you get depressed about it or you get numb. So it's not helpful at a psychological level. We know now that everything has to do at the psychological level because we need to change our behaviors. So it has to be on what is the best visual story.

telling that can ultimately get us to change as beings, get us to inspire to be different type of people. We're suggesting many levels of doing that. First, we're suggesting regulations of advertising. I mean, I'm sure you saw that coming since the beginning of the podcast, but it's...

It's impossible to have accepted to be targeted so endlessly into our space. We just is not, we have to put a stop to it. Well, of course you're allowed to advert, advertise, but it's too much. Yes.

Rebeka (01:04:56.185)

Sorry, just, Maureen, sorry to interrupt, but just thinking about the regulations, which fantastic. One thing that you spoke a little bit about social media, and social media is an inherently commercial space. And so I wonder if regulations are even possible if we, you know, like we're just, we're the product, right? Like on the social media, like we're there, we're being targeted, we're being sold to each other.

Do you think that we can even hope for regulations or do you think we just have to change where we're spending our time? Just on that point.

Marine Tanguy (01:05:28.302)

I think, well, I think in a sense it's linked. The good news with our civic space versus our phones is that you have bought this phone and you've downloaded this app and you have pressed, I agree to all the terms and regulations.

But you haven't done this when it comes to the city space you live in. You haven't said, yes, absolutely, by all means, like, bombard me with a thousand plus commercials a day. You haven't signed that paperwork. So because you haven't signed it, we can discuss it to why we want to change that. It always comes back to the fact that audiences need to be aware of the impact it has. And in the first place, which is what we're trying to do with the book and then documentaries that will come later on.

Rebeka (01:05:51.097)

Absolutely.

Marine Tanguy (01:06:10.478)

But second from that is their audiences need to feel that they have a right to it and they can speak that language to pass that right, which is the visual literacy that we're developing. And then third is to say, well, actually we need to pass this regulation. So it will come at different levels from a communication angle and educational level, and then the policy angle. But for me, regulations are starting to happen in various different countries, including states in the US. It's when you think about it.

It's also problematic where the reason also most of your billboards are in low income areas is because the land is cheaper, but they're also not aware of their rights and they have, they cannot pay for lawyer or lobbying group, right? So it's problematic at large on how we have unregulated around the right to a visual environment.

What I'm inspired by is there are conversations right now about the right to quality of air and the right to water and the right to resources.

There's really interesting legal debate in Europe where you have Evian and Vitell, two big water companies who are shipping plastic bottles full of water on a daily basis. Meanwhile, your locals next to the manufacturing don't have enough water anymore for their own houses and their own land. And the question that they're trying to tackle as a legal route is actually, can you earn a resource like water?

Can you earn, again, the air and therefore justify drastic differences of quality of air depending on social economics? Here it's actually the same conversation when it comes to visual pollution. It's actually, can you privatize this space? Since when have we allowed it to be private?

Marine Tanguy (01:08:01.134)

if we are by definition saying this is a civic space, then your private sector has to be regulated. That's the conversation that's slowly coming at so many different angles that makes me hopeful that we'll be learning to how it's done.

when it comes to water, when it comes to air, and therefore we pass when it comes to the visual pollution in the same way. Same with noise pollution, same with again, the pollution of the air at large. This is all coming and it's all a reminder that as we are going to become more and more in cities, one out of two of us will live in cities, share even more resources. We have to have those questions on what do we make of it? What are the shared resources looking at and what are the type of policies?

I feel confident this will come because it will come to very different angles and it's very motivating as we speak. I think the second is also back to visual education at large where so we've obviously tackled your non -stop you being bombarded with all that commercially made truth but there's also the fact that

We've seen it with deepfakes, we've seen it with visual misinformation coming our way. Training our eyes is an urgency. Regulations won't catch up on time with the rise of that technology. So we need to make sure that we are trained to spot visual misinformation. Right now,

of the studies that are being led, 60 to 70 percent of people can't recognize something that has been doctored. So ironically, in the timing when AI is widely discussed, I think it's putting back on the forefront the importance of visual education, which also gets me hopeful that we could then push for a course that is less about whether or not you want to be part of the art world, because that's a whole different topic, but more how do we visually educate our kids from them being three years old.

Marine Tanguy (01:09:59.63)

on too much order because we think that's a critical skill set when it comes to ultimately evolving in the world that we're going to evolve in the coming years. It's again, maybe because I'm obviously plugged into the into the swells as we speak, but I think the conversations are actually moving forward pretty well because the awareness.

Sadly to the increase of that tank going too fast and on the other side with air pollution and resources being tighter, I think these conversations are coming much more at the forefront of all conversations.

Rebeka (01:10:32.761)

take it back to climate. This is your practice for tonight. So what are some interesting climate visuals that are countering this sort of like doom narrative that you're talking about, like where the fire is huge and the people, you're just seeing the people dying and you feel completely hopeless and then you go and consume more. How do we counter that?

Marine Tanguy (01:10:55.95)

Sorry, I actually realized I completely went on the tangent. I know, exactly. Let's just go back in. Apologies for the tangent. But relevant tangent for very different tangent. Initially, it started with the polar bear on the tiny ice floe. And that was the first kind of time cover back 20 years ago that will make you really sad. Then we realized, okay, this was too far from our lifestyle.

Rebeka (01:10:58.777)

No, no, no, I pulled you out. It was regulations.

Rebeka (01:11:08.633)

so much.

Marine Tanguy (01:11:22.126)

So we're going to bring it back to our lifestyle being destroyed by nature. And then you see those cars sinking into water. I don't know if you remember the storm in California last early 2023, where you had this swimming pool dingling from the cliff.

But what it creates is constantly a divided approach between nature and us. It's this amazing lifestyle we have and nature is trying to destroy it. So we actually, when it comes to emotional connection, we further and further remove from it. I think what's missing is again back to that psychology called an emotional visual storytelling. It's those little actions on a daily basis narrated in ways that actually are emotional and better connected to us because it feels that most of nature is destroying us.

us on all these pictures more than actually at large looking at your day -to -day steps. And looking also on how easy it is for this change to shift if we all start taking those day -to -day actions. So it's less dramatic, less black and white divisive, which are great for the clickbait, but like you said, it just doesn't result in much action.

Rebeka (01:12:32.857)

Thanks so much, Maureen. My last question I always ask is whether, I mean this is funny because you wrote a book about this, but do you have a piece of homework for the audience, something to do or see or look into? I mean, probably just read your book, right?

Marine Tanguy (01:12:47.95)

and

No, I mean, I couldn't just say like, let's plug my book and you have to read it. I'm not that way. I think it's, you know, it's tuning in onto the effect of Images that it has on you. So even if you take a couple of minutes and close your eyes and think, what have I seen today? And trying to now associate feelings of how you felt towards it. It's just starting to be aware of the impact that Images has on you. Like, there's a few things that you see in the books that

Rebeka (01:12:51.193)

Hehehehe

Marine Tanguy (01:13:18.672)

perhaps you're doing an audit, but you're having to almost carve out the submissions out of your system because you're not used to being able to express them. But just being aware on just really posing and thinking.

actually that emotion really got me upset or that image really got me upset and I've been carrying it with me for a few days because it was quite a lot to look at or actually I got really inspired by this quite the opposite but trying to associate how you feel psychologically and emotionally towards imagery is the first step because then you're going to start thinking...

Hold on, I know myself and I should be careful about that exposure to that type of imagery or I should regulate it. So it's tuning in on the importance of it. There's an amazing book that her dog, her body keeps a score that does the same thing when it comes to the body and stops making you reflect on that little back pain that you have is because you've had an argument with your best friend last week, you know, so you have to reconnect. And I'm asking you that in the same thing of reconnecting.

Rebeka (01:14:07.449)

Yeah.

Rebeka (01:14:17.753)

Hmm.

Marine Tanguy (01:14:21.294)

that frustration that you had that you cannot get out of your head, out of nowhere, the root of it could be through certain types of measures that you looked at that you struggled with. And reconnecting the dots constantly, which is the same with Body Keeps The Score, where you're reconnecting what you're experiencing with your body, having those weird physical pains that you think are just, you're trying to fix, but actually it's how you feel that hasn't been fixed.

Rebeka (01:14:47.321)

That's such a lovely note to end on. Maureen, thank you so much for your time. I've really loved this conversation.

Marine Tanguy (01:14:52.942)

Well, thank you so much and bring in questions and apologies for the tangent.

Rebeka (01:14:57.817)

Never apologize for a tangent. This podcast, oh my gosh, if you knew how many tangents. Maureen, I hope you have a great panel tonight. I can't wait to hear about it.

Marine Tanguy (01:15:06.414)

Thank you so much.

Outro

Thank you for joining us on this episode of The Heart Gallery. Thank you to Samuel Cunningham for the podcast editing and to Cosmo Sheldrake for the podcast music, which comes from his song, Pelicans We. The podcast art is created by me. Find links for connecting in the show description.

If you loved listening to this conversation, please do rate please do share with someone who might be interested in the concepts and ideas Marine talked about.

Until our next episode, take care.