that, at any rate, seems to be an ambition of my guest today, one of the world's most innovative artists, tomas saraceno, whose work involves spiders, balloons, dust and air. at its heart, it's a challenge to all of us — are we ready to reinvent what it means to be human in a complex ecosystem, on a small planet?

tomas saraceno, welcome to hardtalk. welcome. thank you for inviting me. it's a great pleasure to have you here, tomas. now, your art involves big ideas and, sometimes, very big installations. and for many of your viewers, it's something unusual, something they've never seen before. do you find it useful, or even easy, to explain your art? not really. but sometimes, i get help from others to try to understand what i'm trying to do and many times, i get the help of the spiders and their webs as much as thinking that many, you know, cosmologists are always trying to think about the origin of the universe or they find analogies in the three—dimensional spider web of how the universe had formed right after the big bang. and that was one of the entry points. i mean, there's many things that i don't know. usually, i ask the spiders and their webs. oh, my goodness, so i have asked you about your art and you've immediately decided to tell me about the spiders, so we have to get

immediately to the spiders. we'll get there, yes. why are spiders so important to you? well, i was always fascinated about their webs, and that was kind of an entry point. and, i mean, it's a little bit how much you could think about the spider web without the spider, right? or the chicken or the egg. and i mean, you know, it's a little bit like now, there's a fashion about it, thinking about how much the brain of the animal is confined to the head or how much the brain is expanded within the webs of relationships. in this case, many argue — and part of my study is also how much you can recognise their ability to think within the web. and sometimes, you know, you can think a little bit about, in a relationship, how much you can cut humans from the planet. and, you know, we always think that we have a certain independency and today, with the climate change and environmental catastrophe we are facing, you cannot separate any more those things. we always have to think within a kind of a larger ecosystem, and not so much focus on... and interesting that we even used the phrase at the beginning of

the internet, the world wide web. so, we are somewhat preoccupied with ideas about webs. yes, absolutely. and i think so, it's — it's not so wide, let's say, and it's pretty much, you know, exclusive to some humans. but getting back to spiders, even in the answers you've given me so far, i'm thinking to myself, "this man sounds "more like a natural scientist than he does an artist". hey, i think sometimes, we are so confined to our comfort zone, right? as an artist, you have to be defined and know certain knowledge. as a scientist also. and i think sometimes, it's very difficult to think within the categories, right? and i think, you know, what we are trying to do with the art is try to think how we can weave different relation. what is the web that we need to weave together to try to kind of avoid this kind of compartmentalised way of thinking? in the end, though, you know,

i can walk into an exhibition — a saraceno exhibit — and i can find the ways in which you've either got real spiders�* webs, because you do use spiders in your exhibits, or you've recreated a three—dimensional web by other means. but either way, i'm thinking to myself, "the spider did "this, not you". absolutely. and the spider, with all due respect to spiders, is not an artist. i think — so, we, again, need to redefine who is an artist and who's not, right? and i mean, to that extent, you know, we can think about spiders have been on the planet almost 300 million years. human sapiens, 200,000. i mean, sometimes biologists, as you mentioned before, said more or less for a species to know how to live in a place, they need to live minimum five million years. and you think about the knowledge of the spider living on a planet is, i think, there is a chance that they might survive much below — beyond what humans have.

so, in a sense, you're a vehicle through which you feel we can learn about our planet, about our ecosystem, about ourselves, thanks to the spider? yes. oh, i think spiders are using me to say, "look how long i have lived on the planet". it's time for spiders to take over galleries and exhibitions and become really a source of, at least for me, inspiration for so many years, and for so many others who do not suffer the arachnophobia, right? yeah, because obviously, to many people, spiders are scary. and also, we have this notion in our world that to keep it clean and tidy, if we see a spider or a spider's web, we immediately want to wipe it away or get the vacuum cleaner and vacuum it away. am i right in thinking that in your exhibits, you have a rule that your galleries, museums, wherever you display, they are absolutely not allowed to remove any spider? absolutely! absolutely. and i think so now, at a certain age, you start

to see that there are a lot of spiders — when you stop, yeah, brooming them away, spiders are always inhabiting the world, have inhabited it much longer than us, no? and to that extent also, it's thinking a little bit about not everybody suffers the phobias of the, sometimes, western world. and that was one of the interests that also we start to collaborate in one of the first rooms of the exhibition is dedicated to pierre bollo, a spider diviner from cameroon, who had this tradition, a militant tradition, to treat the spiders as a source of wisdom, as an oracle. and when the village have some questions, there is a set of cards which are leaves which are carried and then they ask the spider, and the spider will come up, shuffle the cards, and that will be interpreted. and this is kind of a... you know, for india, the cows are holies. and this means there are very different ways of how the world somehow... yeah, there aren't many societies where spiders are holy or sacred, or regarded as oracles. but i know you've brought your latest exhibition to london,

to the serpentine gallery, and i know that you'll try to convince people that, through the spider's web, they can also think about musicality, they can think about communication. absolutely. it seems there's no end to the way you, as an artist, see potential in the spider and its web. yeah. no, no, absolutely. we have, for many years, together with other scientists, friends and different disciplines have tried to understand that the web also could be like a kind of musical instrument. but sometimes, we produce a sound which is not audible because sometimes, the vibration go really below the human perception, below the 20 hertz — that is our threshold of hearing. and i mean, we have invented very sophisticated, let's say, microphones who will be able to amplify that very tiny vibration... 0n the web? so, you're kind of recording

the movement of the web? yeah, exactly, and that then is transmitted again through shakers which, what they do, they vibrate solid elements. with that, you don't hear it coming, you hear the vibration. this is into the field of biotremology what we are experimenting, and we are pioneering also into the possibility of communicating with a spider. like sometimes, you don't hear the phone call but the phone, the iphone or a telephone vibrates. and there are different modes of communication and we are trying to think how we can bridge that. so, here you sit with me, as an internationally acclaimed artist, and we've spent quite a lot of time talking about spiders. and then, the other elemental thing that seems to inspire your art is perhaps even simpler in a way, and that is the air. yeah. and notjust the air but also what happens to air when it's warmed by the sun. because that brings us to another preoccupation of yours, the balloon. yes. so, again, explain to me how you as an artist can get such inspiration from such simple,

tangible things in our planet? i don't know. i think everybody�*s conscious about 1.5 degrees differential of temperature and thresholds that the planet might hold and sustain a certain amount of life. and if we reach the two degrees, what will happen? and then, what i kind of get fascinated about also — i mean, as a kid, always, i love balloons, but these balloons were always filled up with helium. and, i mean, you know, down the road, i thought... i'm interested also in cosmology. let's say i was always fascinated not only in spider web but a cosmic web, right? and thinking about — i was a follower of carl sagan, and... right. and also, the notion of flight and rising above the earth. yeah, yeah. but that way of rising, you know, today, i think the dream of flying had become really a nightmare because the amount of pollution in the way that part of humanity fly is really... well, now, we all are supposed to be — and should be — concerned about our carbon footprint. absolutely. and clearly, the technologies we have for flying involve

the output of greenhouse gas emissions. absolutely, absolutely. as long as we don't recognise also that we are all flying on the planet earth, right? we are spinning around the sun at a very high velocity, and also around ourself. the idea of flying, you know, depends on the scale that you perceive. but the one that i was fascinated also is how much like a bag, which could be filled up with air when it's black, and it's warming up byjust the energy of the sun, could also lift up people up into the air. so, you're the balloon man. and i think i'm right in saying you've even — to illustrate the point — that you're an artist and a balloon man, you brought — what have you brought in? absolutely, i brought a bag, and this is part of the foundation that we have put up, it's called the aerocene foundation, which is a community which basically, it kind of promotes the possibility also that — yeah, this is inside the bag. so, this is your backpack balloon? yes. and the point about this which makes it different from other — i mean, balloons aren't new, but balloons usually, as you say, are powered

by helium, they are fired up, they involve inputs of energy. your balloon involves only trapping air and then using the sun's natural power to warm that air and the balloon rises. yeah, absolutely. now, that's kind of interesting, basically very simple and interesting, but i'm wondering what... your message seems to be, "we can all learn very "practical things from this," but what can we learn? well, i think that heat maybe can produce something that could transform things and objects. for example, when you think about how much it weighs, it might be a kilo, but if it's warming up here, it might change his latency, and state and will be able to lift 1.5 kilos or two kilos. could it lift — if the balloon were big enough, bigger than that one, could it lift a human being? yes, of course. and this is what we have been doing for a couple of years.

we have, you know, together with leticia marquez, a pilot in argentina, and communities in the salt lake, who, in that territory, we will be able to gain 32 world records of the most sustainable flying in human history — more than the ballon montgolfier and the brother wrights. so, again, as with the spiders, i'm looking at you and i'm thinking this is all fascinating, and you are a guy who is clearly marrying science with creativity. but to use the most simple question of all, is it art? i believe so, because i don't know what is art. i let the others also weave these connections, but i think, so is... ..it could be. i think so, and i hope so. and somehow, the community have been welcoming during the last years, or decades, and this is something that i wish to continue. yeah. as you say, you've broken flying records for completely

unpowered balloon flight and you've done it in argentina, and it seems there's a message there, too, because you've done it in a place which you know well, these salt flats, which are currently being mined — or the argentinian government wants to expand the mining for lithium. yeah. some of the biggest deposits of lithium in the world are there. now, lithium is vital for the industry behind building batteries, particularly for electric cars. you say that one of your commitments is to finding new ways of living to sustain human life on the earth. surely, mining lithium, developing electric transportation is a part of that and yet, you seem to be using the symbol of your unpowered flight across these salt flats to demand that that lithium mining stop. yeah, i think so. i mean, what is very clear today, to extract one ton of lithium requires two million litres of water and sometimes, people have not so much consciousness about the damage that it produces in certain landscape and this mean we —

and that this land is inhabited also... but do you not... ..by people. ..as a man who talks always of sustainability, changing our model of human civilisation, do you not want to see the end of the combustion engine? no, absolutely, i want to see — but at which cost? and this means there is a very part of the society which is very privileged, who allow themselves to have this decarbonisation of the industry. and at the same time, the persons are part of the population who keep suffering from these extraction of minerals are the ones who more needed, maybe, this transition, and this means there is a huge inequality in the way that it keeps perpetrating this violence to the sometimes country — let's say the global south — which somehow, suffering from the energy transition which is very unequal, and unless we try to really talk about a just transition and who profits from that transition, i think, so it will bring really many inequalities in the world. and this, it seems to me, is where you are not only a creative person but you're a deeply political person. you use this word, the �*capitalocene,’

to describe the era that we are living in. some call it the anthropocene, but you call it the capitalocene because, as far as you're concerned, it is extractive, carbon—based industrialisation, the absolute motor of capitalism that is potentially destroying human life on earth. so, would you call yourself a revolutionary? i don't know. i think so that some things need to change and the first is, like, i'm trying to change myself and the way that i fly and i travel and i move. well, you're anticipating my questions because i'm thinking to myself, "if this is a man who's obsessed with unpowered "flight, who regards capitalism and extractive carbon—based "industries as evil, you're doing an awful lot "of flying from gallery to museum "to exhibition. "you're not living the true life." what i'm trying to say is,

like, of course, you know, one of the biggest challenge is not to tell the others what to do, but try to tell to yourself. absolutely. and to that extent, that's what i've been dedicating in relationship with the fly more than 20 years. well, you didn't fly to london by balloon, did you? no, but i came by train. and unfortunately, today, when you came by train, you see that not only — it's very privileged to come by train from berlin because it costs five times more to come with a train than to take a plane. it's why government keeps sustaining a source of transportation which is — first, you know, it takes 12 hours to arrive. the trains are always delayed. and at the same time, government keeps sustaining flights instead of other modes of transportation. there's been, you know — there are a lot of things that i think so we need to work it out, to try to find a more balanced way of mobility. you've written very powerfully about the need that we humans have for hope and you've put that in the context of the current discussion on climate change, whether we can prevent,

you know, dangerous levels of warming in our planet, and you've talked about an experiment that was conducted, i believe, in the �*50s with rats, where it was proven that if rats were put in water and they were drowning, if a few of the rats were saved and the rats could understand there was the possibility, the hope, of being saved, then all of the rats would suddenly struggle much harder to survive. is that some sort of metaphor for what you think is happening to humanity? we need hope and hope helps us? yeah. now, when we keep thinking that humanity is all the same, you know, when you think about, you know, there are 5% of the population of the earth which are, you know, considered first nation people, indigenous community, are the ones who help to maintain and preserve 80% of the biodiversity of the planet and somehow, are not respected. and right in the global north, by having a lifestyle — which i'm part of also — has somehow hidden the planet

to a certain level, that their capacity to survive is not any more able to maintain. when we think about humanity as all being equal, i think there is a big, you know, trouble, and i think part of the exhibition at the serpentine, what we do is like, yes, veronica chavez and natividad vidal, they're two persons from the community of argentina, they are coming and they have flight to london. they have a carbon credit. there's a gigantic depth from the global north to the global south, and this has been seen in the cop26, 27 and many cops, and it means they are a part of the population that their voice needs to be heard. you talk about the cops, the big global conferences on climate change, trying to get global agreements to reduce emissions. you've, ithink, installed your art in three of them. yeah. has it made any difference? i mean, you know, again, do you think your creativity, your installations, your art is making any difference? i hope so, and i think so. depend where, right?

it make any difference to the life of spiders, i don't know. but i think so, yes, because what had happened many times, for example, just in the case of the spider, is many people, when they see this beautiful spider web, they come back and they said, "oh, my god, i found an artwork "in my house" and it's been kind of really shifting, you know, the perception of what an artwork could be and how many artists there are living in the house of the people. and it mean — this i think so, you know, the shifting or perception of the phobias, i think so many of the exhibition, i could say after so many times in so many places around the world, i think so many became more arachnophilics than arachnophobics. yeah, well... laughs. ..the spiders keep coming back in this conversation. of course! i'm just — i'm thinking about your past. your childhood was very complicated because your argentinian father was forced to leave argentina during thejunta, during the repressive years, was an exile in italy. later, you went back to argentina.

then, you went to germany, where there was a great deal of freedom to pursue your creativity. i'm just wondering whether, you know, you love spiders, but given what you've learned about the flaws of humanity, the political repression, what you call the economic exploitation, do you not much like humans? you know, i like humans, of course. but i have hope that some humans might change, right, for the better of all humanity on the planet, right? i think so. that's my hope. and just a thought about that hope for change — there are some people in different direct action and environmental campaign groups who are now using art as a means of expressing their anger, their determination to tell humanity we must change. they're throwing paint and soup and different things at great works of art, including van goghs. they're glueing themselves to artworks. it's conceivable that in this serpentine exhibition you've

got, somebody might try and destroy one of your works, to say, you know, there's something more important than art. we have to send a message — the planet needs rescue. how would you feel about that? i think so. i mean, it's the same what i'm doing many times. you know, when we flew this sculpture in argentina, the message that we decided to lift was the message from the community, which says water and life is much more worth than lithium. water and life is worth much more than lithium. exactly. and its meaning, i think so, is like the possibility of working together and, right, and if art can be used also to lift up messages — in this case, what i have been using or what we have collaborated is with the community of salinas grandes for the purpose of maintaining life at large, human and non—human living on the planet earth, i think — so that synergy could be only good for the world. and i don't wish to sound like a cynic but i have to ask you this, given everything you've said about capitalism and my knowledge of the way the art world works

and my knowledge also that you run a big workshop in germany with a0 or 50 staff doing the artwork with you, which clearly requires a lot of money. yeah. you make money from your art, don't you? yes, of course. and how do you live with that, given your feelings about the capitalocene period we're living in? absolutely. it's saying like, how much is good enough? right? and i think so if you don't put a limit of how much you earn, then you start to earn something that you don't need. and i think so, the majority — and this means, this is what i'm trying to do with the exhibitions also — this means in the first place when you enter the serpentine is pierre bollo, the spider diviner. and he's selling his own divination. this means when i went to cameroon... this is the indigenous cameroonian spider... ..diviner. absolutely. and what he's doing — when i went there, the first thing is like — i was feeling a little bit, "0h, should i do it again?" kind of a national geographic portrait, an artist which will benefit from their knowledge to be exhibited in london and people will kind of...

and then very clearly he said — well, after a week of conversation, discussion, what could happen? — he said, "can you do a web page for me, because i want to sell "my divination to the rest of the world". people come to the serpentine, we built up a web page for him where he had been... so you're not exploiting him — or, indeed, yourspiders, maybe — for profit, is that what you're telling me? absolutely. and this means that we have already raised — and he have — through his own web page, a lot of divination, which are charged, indirectly are the source of their income, to help to maintain that knowledge. and it's their knowledge. it's this 5% of population which knows how to maintain this biodiversity on the planet earth. well, it's fascinating stuff. tomas saraceno, i thank you forjoining me. i'm sure many more people will now be interested in your spiders and your balloons. thank you very much. it was a pleasure. thank you. it's great to have you in the studio.

it has been a very wetjuly so far. some spots, particularly towards the north and west and across central southern england, have already seen 1.5 times thejuly average of rainfall and we are only halfway through the month. there is a lot more month to go and a lot more rainfall, too, especially over the next couple of days. this is the rainfall accumulation chart. you can see some western areas seeing up to 50mm more for the next few days, adding onto those already very high rainfall totals. things will stay unsettled. that deep area of low pressure which gave us the storms over the weekend, moving across scandinavia, meaning lightening winds for many on monday but still a key north—westerly blowing over much of scotland. cloudy for much of scotland.

a few showers developing here and there. there will be a good scattering of showers across england, wales and northern ireland. some sunny spells in between, perhaps staying largely dry for south east england. ttemperatures highest here in the best of the sunshine, generally high teens to the low 20s. around the seasonal average. on tuesday, another occlusion approaches and this will give us heavy downpours of rain, again, particularly across parts of west wales, northern ireland and north west england. it's all pushing eastwards throughout the day, good scattering of showers. a sunny start across scotland but more cloud and rain by the end of the day. 2a degrees maybe in south—west england and it should stay largely dry here. the winds will fall lighter once again. the occlusion moves into the north sea. wednesday is not a bad—looking day. plenty of dry weather. we could see a bit of sea breeze convergence perhaps across north east england and eastern scotland. elsewhere, a few showers always possible but lots of dryness and sunshine and temperatures won't feel too bad either.

warm in the best of the sunshine, the low 20s for many. for thursday, more of a north—westerly wind coming in, so we dip in temperature and be feeling cooler. particularly towards the north and west, where we will see most of the cloud. across northern ireland, north—western scotland some showers. the best of the sunshine is where we could see more showers pop—up as we go through the afternoon. temperatures will be lower, rather disappointing for this point injuly. high teens, possibly low 20s again. into friday, looking to the atlantic and other deep area of low pressure starting to push its way in. this could give us again some strong winds and heavy downpours of rain. moving across northern ireland, through the morning, approaching north west england and western wales by the time we get to the end of the day, there will be more cloud spilling its way further eastwards. temperatures disappointing for the time of year but some uncertainty still on the timing of this rain. some of the models saying it

will be moving through as we go through the weekend. the jet stream is dipping as we head through the end of the week. always on the cooler side of the jet, this is where the intense heat wave is across southern europe, we won't see any of that hot air. instead, low pressure systems will slip southwards and eastwards across the uk, just rotating around. it'll be wet and windy at times. in fact, the outlook is still looking pretty unsettled. a lot more showers to come in the forecast. it won't be raining all the time but there will be longer spells of rain at times. there will be some sunshine, rather windy weather, but in the sunshine it is july so it'll feel warm in the best of that. goodbye for now.

live from london, live from london, this is bbc news. this is bbc news. large parts of europe brace for more sweltering heat — as extreme weather as extreme weather sweeps across the globe. sweeps across the globe. a russian—installed official in crimea declares an emergency on the bridge that links the occupied crimean peninsula to mainland russia — we'll have the latest. and lionel messi is presented to fans at inter miami — as the argentinian signs on for two seasons in the sunshine state.