SS: Is there a way that you see that happening in your own process in relation to Soil Starter or Loop?

KK: On a practical level, I completely ignored the bureaucracy that usually hampers this kind of activity if it is labeled as an officially sanctioned project, such as the need for clearly defined objectives for the programs. I started the Soil Starter project with the simple question, "What if I started collecting kitchen scraps from friends to compost?" As an individual artist, I had the privilege to try these projects without having all of the kinks worked out. Eventually I arrived at one possible solution to a problem that we have in Chicago (and in many cities). I would encourage others to work this way; I'd like to see more individual citizens trying something out and not waiting or hoping for some other group, whether it be the city government or some loosely organized activist group, to offer up a solution.

SS: Could you describe your new work for Beyond Green-Transport I-and your plans for it as a means of shipping/disseminating/marketing your projects? Ideally, how do you hope the institutions presenting the exhibition and the audiences who visit it will engage with the work?

KK: Transport I is a self-contained display for the projects Soil Starter and Loop; the booths and display systems you might see at a trade show or an expo influenced its design. Ideally, I'd like to find opportunities for it to be exhibited in different kinds of venues, in addition to the art exhibition context. The display includes all of the ephemera you would need to start one of these pilot programs in your own community: instructions, materials, and tools. By laying all of these out, I hope it will illustrate just how easy (or difficult) it can be to implement your own local composting network or paint recycling project.

SS: Could you elaborate on that last point? What are some of the challenges you've encountered with these projects or with your practice in general?

KK: I don't want to idealize the projects or romanticize the labor involved in them. This is one reason that I realized the pilot programs rather than making a hypothetical project or proposal. By initiating these small-scale projects, I have learned just how difficult it can be to get something like this started. It requires a lot of back-end work in planning the logistics of collection and processing the materials. I have taught myself a process for this by trial and error. Based on my experience, I was then able to develop the framework for someone else to try it out.

One challenge with my practice in general is that I really get absorbed by the active recycling programs. I enjoy the planning and the execution of the programs and interacting with the people who provide paint and compost materials. However, this is only one half of my practice. The other component of the project is "the art part"-creating and framing the projects for an art context. Balancing my interest in both these arenas has been a challenge.

SS: Do you think the pieces will lose any of their punch once they move out of these small-scale local networks as the work travels? Will they gain anything from these new contexts?

KK: The work could gain or lose punch depending on where it is presented. The projects initiated in Chicago are a direct response to the lack of infrastructure in place for adequate community recycling. Certainly the city government here is trying to address this, and they are making headway. But we as citizens may be able to organize and develop possible solutions much more quickly, although on a smaller scale, than city government could.

San Francisco has a paint recycling program and collects compost curbside. So obviously these specific pilot programs are less relevant if exhibited in a city where these issues are addressed by the city government. However, the projects still resonate on the metaphoric level of addressing waste and overconsumption in our culture.

SS: How do you see your work fitting into current art practice?

KK: Artists have always included in their work ideas and issues that arise from the culture, which is what I feel I am doing. That being said, is there a trend or movement in current art practice which is fully embracing or incorporating environmental concerns? Well, I do think this is happening in many aspects of our culture-in art, product design, architecture, government policy, school curriculum, even at the office I work in, where recycling has become a topic of interest.

SS: How do you see Transport I relating to or pushing against notions of sustainable design?

KK: Apart from the content of the two recycling projects themselves, the piece relates in the way that I am considering how it will travel during the exhibition tour and incorporating that consideration into the design. It immediately made sense to me to have the crate open up into the display. In this case, it certainly did not seem appropriate to make a display and then make a separate crate to ship the display from location to location. That picks up on one of our initial discussions about the exhibition, when we decided that each venue would have the opportunity to implement Loop by recycling its own paint. The idea of shipping paint around from the Chicago version of the paint program just seemed absurd.

SS: In conjunction with the exhibition's Chicago presentation, you will be teaching a summer course for high school students participating in the University of Chicago's Collegiate Scholars Program. Please tell me about that project and how you see it relating to the exhibition.

KK: The course is about exploring the diverse forms with which contemporary artists deploy politically engaged messages. Specifically, we will be looking at the rich history of Chicago artists creating works that frame socially relevant issues such as housing, social justice, organized labor, and environmentalism. Sometimes what the artist comes up with doesn't really resemble what we might think of as visual art, and sometimes it doesn't really relate to our idea of what activism is. In Beyond Green, there are a number of artists touching on disciplines outside of visual art and in essence designing possible answers to questions from that area of expertise. Our answers to those questions are at times very impractical, but they also allow for an opening up of the problem-solving process that can be very liberating. This is something I really relish, the problem-solving skills that can be developed and refined through training in visual art.