announcer: from our studios in new york city, this is "charlie rose." charlie: welcome to the program. tonight a conversation with president barack obama. the interview follows are set down at the white house last week area this took place in hanover, germany where the president attended and industrial fair with german chancellor angela merkel. this was the final leg of a trip that included stops in saudi arabia and the u.k. in london he had lunch with the queen, had dinner with a future king, and played golf with the prime minister and celebrated in riyadh he met with leaders of the gulf corporation counsel and

they talk about isil and iran. in britain he made it case for the -- to stay in the european union. all the matters discussed including some of the things he said in his speech in hanover. here's that conversation. president obama: good to see you. charlie: someone said this is the trip about your -- three of your favorite ladies. president obama: it is a pretty powerful conversation. i have enjoyed spending time with all of them. i would say that this is the most elegant walk and talk i have done in quite some time. charlie: proud to be part of it. president obama: absolutely. charlie: you are sending 250 special forces to syria. what did that represent? president obama: it represents what i said from the start which is that u dismantlings isil is a priority -- us dismantling isil is a priority although we will not be sending ground troops

into fight. we will try to find out what works and then double that. the own thing that has worked so far is as putting special forces in for training and advising local forces but also intelligence gathering. one of the challenges of mounting a fight against a group like kiesel that -- isil that embeds itself in civilian forces, they are not isolated, they are not out in remote areas where we can hit them on their own so having people who develop relationships with local tribes, with people who may be going in and out of places like rocca -- we can distinguish between people we can work with and those we cannot. charlie: will they be engaged in search and killed messenger -- missions? president obama: i will not going into detail. as a general rule, their role is not to engage strictly with the

enemy but rather to work with local forces that is consistent with our overall policy. charlie: a question about the gcc. you have made it clear that you wanted to go there and reassure them and also talk about iran, how you can both be aggressive in monitoring and at the same time open to diplomacy. did something come out of this meeting on that point? president obama: there is no doubt that there is good reasons to be suspicious about iran. they have been a state sponsor of terror. they have tried to destabilize some of their gcc neighbors and they support organizations like hezbollah that threaten israel and have engaged in terrorist acts against the united states. the argument i have made to them is that within iran, there are

forces that recognize the need to engage the world in a more constructive way. they are not liberals, they are not friends of america. charlie: are the moderates? president obama: they are practical and more moderate. there are high niners -- hard-liners. what we should be doing is setting up a collective response to any aggression that is generated by the hard-liners. while at the same time being in a dialogue with those who understand the need for change and i think that if we are going to solve columns like syria, if we are going to make -- problems like syria and make progress in yemen where we have a cessation of hostilities, it makes sense for those gcc countries to not necessarily trust iran's that at least open up a dialogue and a

channel where interests of both sides can be met and we can reduce the sectarianism that unfortunately has feeding a lot of the violence in the middle east. charlie: let me pivot to china. how aggressive do you see the action in the south china sea and are you worried that they will cross some line where you will have to respond more aggressively? president obama: i have been consistent since i have been president and believing that a productive, candid relationship between the u.s. and china is vital not just to our countries but to world peace and security. and generally, we have been able to establish those kinds of channels and work through a series of tensions. i have repeatedly said to the chinese government that we welcome a continued, peaceful rise in china. one of the arguments that i make in the united states as we have

a lot more to fear from a week, disintegrating, paranoid china that cannot absorb hundreds of millions of people do might slip back into poverty. we are better off with china that feels confident. charlie: it is not a zero-sum game. president obama: it is not a zero-sum game. they have a tendency to view some of the immediate regional issues or disputes as a zero-sum game. with respect to the south china sea, rather than operate under international norms and rules, their attitude is, we are the biggest kids around here and we are going to push aside the philippines or the vietnamese. charlie: how do you respond? president obama: our argument is that we are not claimants, we're not choosing sides here. what we are trying to uphold is

the basic notion of international rules, norms, and order and so, for example, if the filipinos appeal to international tribunals under the treaty of law of the sea which they are both signatories to, that is a way to resolve a dispute, not by sending out a gunship or threatening fishermen. this is an area where, ironically, china's actions have pushed a lot of the neighbors towards us. if you think about vietnam, i am going to be traveling there next month, given the history between our two countries, the fact that right now, we are far more popular in china than vietnam, and there is a strategic pivot that they are engaged in, partly economic because of the transpacific partnership, partly because their concerns and the desire to balance power between us and china.

i think that is both an opportunity for us but it does not mean that we are trying to act against china. we just want them to be partners with us, and where they break out of their internationalism norms we will hold them to account. charlie: how do you do that? president obama: there are a variety of diplomatic mechanisms. they care about what we think. they are not looking to pick a fight, either. we have to understand their politics and their systems and we're not looking for any rash actions of any sort. but what we have been able to do is send a clear message to them that the international community is on the side of resolving these disputes peacefully. charlie: let me take you to britain where you had lunch with the queen, you had dinner with a future king, and you celebrated

shakespeare's 400th birthday at the globe theater. and then you caused controversy because you said to them, britain is better in the european union. it should not be a brexit because britain and the european union can do more. are they responsive to that, you think, the citizens of britain where you have been held in high regard? president obama: ultimately, this is going to be up to them. i do not have a vote. this is up to the british people. they should make their decisions not based on what is good for the united states, but what is good for the united kingdom. but i am absolutely persuaded that the united kingdom is stronger, more influential, and more prosperous if it stays with the european union. think about it. they said 44% of their exports to this single market in europe. if they live -- leave the european union, they have lost their biggest customer.

they will try to renegotiate their way back in. it will not be on better terms than what they are in right now so just from a pure economic perspective, this should be a no-brainer. there is a larger set of forces at work here mother. there is a corollary between those who are demanding that britain leave the eu, anti-immigrant forces that are concerned about outsiders changing their culture, what we see back home with mr. trump, and some of the rhetoric there, we are in a moment of global change, and people have anxieties about that change. some of it very legitimate. global capital is moving, workers are less mobile, and their -- as a consequence they have less leverage, wages stagnate, there is obviously terrorism fears that have emerged that are very

complicated but people want to simple five them by thinking if we could just her seal ourselves off than we would be ok and what all this adds up to is a desire to pull back with the draw and reject the global integration that has been taking place. unfortunately, in an age of smart phones and the world wide web, and international travel and big cargo ships to global supply chains, that is not possible. what we need to do is not disengage but rather get in there and try to make sure that the international rules are ones that are consistent with our values, so we want -- great britain should be in the eu, arguing on behalf of the values and common sense that they care about and which, by the way, approximate the things we care about as well. ♪

charlie: how bad do you think the opposition to trade and the rise of populism is? some say there is an effort to blame globalization as you just suggested, and that that adds to the optical of plants closing and jobs going overseas and there is a fear not only in europe but the united states. president obama: absolutely.

charlie: how do you convince that trade is positive because you have it trade agreement with asia and with the eu? president obama: there is a reason why people had suspicions about trade. not every trade agreement in the past has been good for workers. there has been offshoring seeking low wages or low environmental standards and companies can profit and so back those goods, irrespective of what that has done to the communities they have left, and so there are legitimate concerns about how globalization has proceeded. my argument and i think this is hard to dispute, is that the only way to change the system is to engage it, not to withdraw from it. if, for example, we do not pass the transpacific partnership where we are writing the rules for the asia-pacific and we are

able to raise labor state -- labor standards so vietnam for the first time will start amazing labor rights or malaysia suddenly recognizes they have to do something about human trafficking, or other countries start saying under the terms of this agreement, we have to abide by certain environmental standards create if we do not ratify that, that we have a status quo in which china goes into those same countries and says, we do not care about human rights. we do not care about worker rights. we do not care about environmental rights. and they will write the trade rules that will this advantage are companies and water down the standards we have build out -- built up inside of our countries. the point is that there are not legitimate concerns about globalization. we are the equivalent of three quarters of the mountain and it is a lot easier to go up then to climb back down. i think the knee-jerk response both from the left and the right

in europe and in some cases, and the united states, has been to say, let's just pull up the drawbridge. let's not ratify any trade agreements. if we do not ratify any trade agreements that means you must be satisfied with the status quo. obviously it is not satisfactory. if you do not like how an after, the transpacific partnership actually modifies it in a way that enforces labor environmental standards that you used to complain about. charlie: you have some convincing to do. president obama: the politics of it are tough and the reason is because the benefits of trade have often been diffuse. and well structured trade agreements it create some disruptions. it may be good for 90% of the economy. it may create all kinds of jobs and export opportunities. export jobs tend to pay better. but people do not see it as much, they do not feel it.

the average person who is working for a company that exports does not necessarily know that they are exporting. they know they are making a great product. if u.s. consumers benefit from lower-cost goods that improve their quality of life and keep inflation down, that is not something they know, but when they see that plant close they know that. oftentimes, if the plant has closed because of automation as opposed to trade, it is hard to make that distinction, so part of our job is not to dismiss concerns about globalization. they are real and they are legitimate. it is to argue how do we make globalization, which is not going to be reversed anytime soon, work for ordinary people. how do we make sure it is working for communities all across america or here in europe, and that is something i am convinced we can do, but we

have to get the facts. charlie: we are in germany. your favorite as you have said, your favorite global leader who has been with you longest. what is it about you and angela merkel and what is it about her what is it about her that represents the kind of leadership you need in europe? president obama: i think that i have an affinity for her. i like to think she has an affinity for me because we are both pretty rational. we both try to analyze a problem and solve it based on facts and reason and common sense. what i also believe, though, is she represents a vision of europe both in her own life and

in her policies that has resulted in stability and prosperity here in europe and a strong transatlantic relationship. she believes in free markets. charlie: she is willing to make moral decisions when it may not be in her political interest. president obama: that is right. she is a good politician other way she would not have been here this long. if you look at what she is doing in respect to the refugee crisis she is making in our image of the german people that, look, we are prospering now because people invested in us in the marshall plan and helped us during reunification and we worked hard and we deserve our success, but we also benefited from those who were willing to see humanity in us after world war ii and we now have that same obligation and that kind of moral authority i think is important. she and i have had disagreements with various issues, on economic

policies, she has pursued a more off-steer set of economic policies and had that influence in europe and whether that has slowed their growth more. even when we disagree, we are disagreeing on the basis of facts and a common baseline of values and i think that is reflective of what the transatlantic relationship has to be about. charlie: you believe this conversation and meet with heads of state from europe. how are you coming together on dealing with migration and refugees? president obama: what i have said to them is that this is not just a european problem. this is our problem, too. for two reasons. one is that you have a flood of refugees and it is disorderly, and these are folks who potentially, if not handled properly, could end up being an alienated population inside of

europe that is not assimilated, is not integrated, and will be resentful and that could have an impact in terms of their willingness to engage us and help us on things like counterterrorism. but more importantly, more strategically is the strain it is putting on europe's politics. the way that it advances far right nationalism. the degree to which it is encouraging a breakup of european unity. that in some cases is being exploited by somebody like mr. putin, who says forget about europe, look at reasserting the nationalist greatness and anti-muslim sentiment. charlie: his goal is to divide europe? president obama: i think that

mr. putin has generally viewed nato, eu, transatlantic unity as a threat to russian power. i think he is mistaken about that. i indicated to him that in fact, a strong, unified europe working with the strong, outward looking russia that is defining its greatness not on the basis of military but rather on the basis of its ability to harness the talents of its people for economic good, that that is the right recipe. so far, he has not been entirely persuaded. in the meantime i want to make sure that europe itself is not threatened. so what we have been doing to

answer your question about how we're approaching it, we are under the nato umbrella trying to help them in the aegean sea. we have been trying to facilitate the deal that has been struck between the eu and turkey, so that there is an orderly process of migration and obviously, one of the things we have to do is try to use all of our diplomatic power together to bring about an and to the civil war in syria. charlie: as i prepared for this and your trip when you met with the gcc, it seems that a principle that comes out of your seven years plus, you have learned or you strongly believe that you have to use, you have to do this with partners, whether it is against isil, or battling migration here in europe or right-wing politics or whatever it might be. is that a message you have to the prime minister's, we have to work together, and are they receptive to it in terms of making a commitment so that they are not free riders making a commitment, to the effort against terrorism in their homes? president obama: they are receptive to it.

charlie: what are you asking? president obama: i think they need to do more particularly around the fence. a semi-proposition and nato is everyone needs to spend 2% of gdp on the fence. we spend close to 4%. we understand that some countries may need to gradually get there. but there has been a complacency involved, post-cold war, around nato defenses. now that you have threats on the southern front, that is going to strain resources requiring new capabilities but the general message that we have to do things together is absolutely true. because the nature of the threats we now face are different. these are transnational threats. these are threats that do not involve defeating some great power that is trying to take over the world but it is climate change and it is transnational

drug trafficking and human trafficking, and it is problems with failed states and poverty and migration. these are the kinds of problems that are best dealt with by linking up and sharing information and sharing best practices and pooling resources. and one of the points i made very early on in my presidency is that the united states will reserve the right to act unilaterally anytime we have to defend ourselves and our core interests and i have done so repeatedly on a number of occasions. i have not been afraid to play u.s. forces when it comes to defending the homeland or our full or our interests, but when it comes to issues that face all of us, that threaten all of us, coming out with a unified voice, being able to project and

magnify the power of those who share values, share institutions, and share a vision for the future, that is the best recipe for success and that is what we have been able to do with the paris agreement, that is what allowed us to get the iran nuclear deal, that is what is allowing us now to ratify a vision of sustainable development that allows us to get private sector actors as well as the public donations into electrifying the subcontinent that needs electricity desperately. that is what allowed us to deal with ebola, a crisis that could have gotten completely out of control, but because of rapid intervention led by us, that saved countless lives. in each of these cases, i think the approach generally has been effective. north korea is a massive challenge.

our force -- first priority is to protect the american people and our allies, the republic of korea and japan that are vulnerable to the actions that north korea is engaging and. they have been thus far resistant to international pressure because there economy is so insulated and so rudimentary, that trying to squeeze them harder oftentimes does not -- it has limited gains. i am concerned about the fact that they continue to invest heavily in not just nuclear weapons but also delivery systems. having said that, this is an example of where maintaining a constructive relationship with china can make a difference because if there is one country that could help us amplify the costs of bad behavior, and could

offer also the benefits of better behavior by the north koreans, china would be a critical partner in that process. charlie: my last question off of that. china helping you make the point you have to stop them but every time they try and feel, they learn something. president obama: that is exactly right. charlie: how close are they to having the missile delivery system as well as the warhead? president obama: obviously they are not as far along as some of the other nuclear states. but, they are erratic enough, their leader is personally irresponsible enough that we do not want them getting close, and we are going to have to continue to apply pressure. this is going to be an issue that i inherited from the previous president and unlike the iran nuclear deal, i am not going to be able to say to the next president, this one i can wrap up in a bow and say it has

been resolved for a while. this is something that has continually going to -- is continually going to fix the region and the international committee and u.s. leadership will be required but it is not something that lends itself to an easy solution. we could obviously destroy north korea with our arsenals, but aside from the military and cost -- humanitarian costs of that they are close to the republic of korea. that creates vulnerabilities for our allies and higher costs in terms of deterrence and we have got to constantly work with our allies to make sure that we are putting as much pressure as possible on them but do it in a responsible and cogent way. one of the things we have been doing is spending a lot more

time positioning our missile defense systems so that even as we try to resolve the underlying problem of nuclear development inside of north korea, we are also setting up a shield that can at least block the relatively low threats -- level threats that they are posing right now. charlie: thanks you -- thank you for taking time. president obama: thank you. ♪ âi

♪ charlie: karen simon is here. she is a multidisciplinary artist engaging in sculpture, text, and performance. her art has been called alluring and philosophical. she has displayed in the tape -- tate in london. her latest exhibit was at the goes in -- gogosian gallery in new york. >> ♪

charlie: that series along with " black square" is in moscow. great to have you at this table. we have been friends for 20 years, and it has been a remarkable journey. how would you define your journey? karen: when i think about my work it was guided by my anxieties and trying to understand the systems by which we order ourselves and to find some logic in the overwhelming madness that surrounds us. more and more, i feel like it is convulsive and i do not know what guides it but it keeps happening.

charlie: and you just go with it. karen: yeah. charlie: it demands of you and you produce. your father was a photographer. karen: my father and grandfather were huge influences. they collected data and took photographs which accompanied the data so that was always i guess a guiding force that i followed. both in very different directions. mike grandmother was interested in the stars and rocks and minerals and my father was more political and interested in different cultures and i learned about them. charlie: was it inevitable that you would choose photography as your medium? karen: i think when i look at my medium, it is -- at its core is the idea and there is an enormous amount of research behind the end result. i never know what form that is going to take so sometimes it

could be a performance piece or sometimes it could be a written piece. oftentimes it is photography. it is -- the concept comes before everything. charlie: what i love about you is that you are fearless. karen: i am not. i have a lot of fears which i think guides me. not fear of failure but just fear of everything. i grew up with a conspiracy theorist. i was taught to mistrust absolutely everything when you talk about my father. from birth forward, i was operating in a practice of doubt. and anxiety. charlie: that was a fascinating relationship. karen: yes. continues to be. charlie: continues to be. have you had role models? karen: i never had identified as an artist or strive to be an

artist. what i do was never guided by those references. it was not something i grew up around, it was not necessarily a deep interest of mine so might has always been a response to sociology, anthropology, politics, aesthetics. economics, all mixed together. philosophy, theory. charlie: but lots of politics. where did that come from? you are a living, breathing citizen. karen: i'm interested in how weakened -- construct authority and systems meant to give margins to the ways in which we operate in the world and give us a sense of order and whether that be through capital or through these governing bodies. these are all constructions and illusions in many ways and what we do to maintain a sense of sanity in the chaos. charlie: where would you put the innocent in that?

taryn: the innocence is its own insanity. just a psychologicalthat those men had to enter into when your life becomes a fiction and there is no way of reversing the fiction so and it is certainly reveals the pitfalls in a system that we take as reliable. charlie: "vogue" said in every of this year. she is perhaps the preeminent conceptual photographer of her generation, one who not only takes pictures but addresses the role of images in shaping plosive -- personal and political history. that sounds like you to me. doesn't it? taryn: particularly in this current project where i was looking at images of very significant moments in history. charlie: to do what with? taryn: iwas taking moments from signing of treaties and records

and agreements that had an economic route. the motivating force behind the signing of these contracts was economic and looking at the seas -- the stagecraft that surrounds those agreements and how that is conveyed to a public, what is the ceremony that surrounds it, and in that, i found that there is this repeating pattern of this presence of flowers, always sitting amongst these very powerful men as they are declaring their design. charlie: the purpose of the flowers is? taryn: in my work, i was always imagining the flowers actively listening to the men in the room and being witnesses of their beliefs and their abilities to control the evolution of governments and economies and citizens. nature being positioned as this

decorative, dormant element in that structure, and we also associate, there is a feminine quality associated with flowers that i was also aware of in this construction and how -- where the flower was positioned and who is really going to last and what is going to survive and who is in power in this equation and so i took these historical images and distilled them down to their aesthetic qualities, and re-created the bouquets. charlie: it will take a look at the images and talk more about some of this. taryn: this was one of my inspirational images. you see these men sitting at the munich conference. they are clearly playing their designs on czechoslovakia and making these agreements about the transfer of land and changing of borders and the impact upon peoples in those areas and then you have this

bouquet of flowers sitting amongst them. when i was starting to explore the history of flowers and how it plays into politics and the systems in which it operates in, i found this image and it struck me that -- this disconnect between the two. i started looking at more historical images in which flowers are present but i wanted to find a decisive moment where something was actually happening and that is why i turn to signings. where something was being declared and often the signings represent broken promises. what i was looking back on had been reversed years later or been forgotten about the powers that be. charlie: was this the first one you selected? taryn: this was an inspirational image and i started looking at historically sourced images from 1968 forward. 1968 was the opening of the global floral market in the netherlands. what i wanted to do is look at

impossible bouquets. impossible bouquets is a thing that started with dutch early still life painting in the netherlands. it represented a fantasy. it was flowers interface that can never be together in the same face because of geographical and see it -- seasonal limitations. because -- during the beginning of capitalism in the netherlands the dutch east india company would go to these distant lands and bring back their findings and trade began to start at it posited a certain luxury for the middle class that they were part of these explorations. what was once only possible in painting and fantasy is now possible in photography and through this global flower market because we live in a consumer society where you expect anything at any time. irrespective of any of the limitations of nature itself. so this flower market is like

the amazon.com of flowers. it is the world's largest building and it is filled with flowers all around the world that -- shift in daily. charlie: one of the central themes of this series and i will ask you more about that before we see more pictures is that flowers are forever and politics is temporal. taryn: right. you have the treaties themselves where the flowers are present and my photographs can preserve that moment as can the historical source image. a photograph can take something out of times continuum so the flowers can remain these youthful -- beautiful conveyances of power and life and vitality and bombast and ceremony, whereas the specimens themselves which i also preserve in my sculptures, they will turn and tarnished just like the agreements themselves, where they will turn and reverse.

there is all these questions about survival, and the serious nature of survival. charlie: look at those flowers. taryn: i had a botanist at the new york botanical gardens identify all the flowers present in the historical source image and i ordered them and re-created them against the background and foreground colors from the historical image so i use that right green background and the yellow tablecloth upon which they were signing and that is an impossible ok. i had the botanist confirmed that every one was an impossible bouquet. they could never be together at the same time in the same place in nature. this particular bouquet was assigning between australia and cambodia regarding the resettlement of refugees who had arrived in australia. australia organized to pay cambodia 40 million australian dollars and in exchange,

cambodia accepted its refugee population. this was an unprecedented agreement in which a developed nation could outsource its refugee responsibilities to a less developed nation in exchange for money. at the time, the prime and esther of australia said, no refugee arriving in australia by boat without a visa would ever be site -- settled in australian territory. this has been cited with the refugee crisis going on right now. this is the establishment of the islamic trade finance corporation which allows sharia compliant finance and trade to be settled. the interesting thing here is sharia complainant -- compliant banking and finance includes things like you cannot involve gambling and pornography and pork. it also insists on risk sharing, no payment or collection of interest, no speculative transactions like derivatives.

it on paper does not allow any of the things that stained our own economy. you can see the flowers sticking in on the edge of the frame but this was in 1994, where american -- america and russia were giving ukraine all the security assurances and promising to respect its integrity and independence and it -- in exchange, ukraine returned its nuclear stockpile to russia which it had inheritance -- it inherited with its independence. they -- that would allow them to launch a missile and appear like ukraine lost it. ukraine gave all that weaponry back with the promise that russia would always protect it. and then you cut to today when russia invaded the crimean peninsula and you have this complexity of survival in ukraine. charlie: there's john major on the right and you can see -- let's see the flowers for a second. what were they? taryn: stargazer lilies.

a lot of these flowers have actually mutated to such a degree that they are literally for show. this is about the stagecraft of power and the flowers themselves have been altered so much, they really mirror and mimic man's behavior in terms of manipulation and proliferation. charlie: was one of these -- your ideas to be seductive with these photographs? taryn: they are framed purposely in these frames that indicate bureaucratic and the furniture of bureaucracy and governance made to appear almost like the u.n. i wanted to have some but he into this with all of these associations one would have with something so decorative and there is a certain on best in the size and scale of them and these color fields and you come into this very small text and they are hit by a complete reversal.

this was reagan and the much again -- mujhadeen. reagan was reissuing cia support. it even consisted of translating the koran into local soviet minority languages and what i find amusing about this image is that the bouquet is unusual in these historical images because it is succulents. i took it as an effort to make them feel at home in this setting in the white house. it may be ronald reagan's love of palm springs and it is how we can take historical data and stamp our impressions upon it which may in fact be completely wrong and skewed. charlie: the next one is in switzerland. taryn: this is an agreement between the united states and

switzerland in which america is chasing tax invaders with offshore accounts abroad. this basically rot down the swiss banking system and insisted on swiss banks revealing the private information regarding any americans' holdings there. charlie: the theme of this one more time is what? taryn: basically right now we are living in a world where the gap between what we see and what is actually there seems to be so huge, particularly in clinical arenas and the way in which power and authority is broadcast, and the means by which we construct that power. so, to me, the flowers are representative of this pattern. it is about those ways in which we decorate ourselves to create a certain sense of control. charlie: here's what you said about entering this project. i entered into this project very

differently than i have in this -- the past. i feel like it was going and the complete opposite direction in object, material, and source. this was different. taryn: it was different because the initial interest in using flowers came from a book that i found by a gardener of the duke named george sinclair in the 1800s, and he was doing different experiments on grasses and how they would compete against each other when he planted them next to one another and darwin cited it in his work is being influential. i found these specimens that were perfectly preserved, beautiful, and in a world where we are living with this digital data that feels temporary or easily disposed of, that this thing remained. i wanted to do something with those dried or buried specimens and speak about these notions of survival. to me it was so much about that. and in this book, those

specimens stood alongside his data recordings. from that point, i went off to find things like that picture at the munich conference with hitler. charlie: you said, i was interested in the idea of these men who felt they could control the evolution of the world through their language and assertions and the flimsy paperwork that they are about to sign and nature is this castrated decorative thing that sits between them. taryn: yes. there are sculptures based on plant presses where all of the 36 agreements that i highlight are pressed up against each other in this squeeze, in this plant press, and to me, it was about hearing this cacophony of all of their different agendas pushing up against one another. for me, it was often about sound, using the sound as such an absent component. everybody who was involved in

the agreements was signatory at the bretton woods conference that established the imf. it is about these countries that worked to create a certain means. i don't know. charlie: let's go to "black square." taryn: this is an empty space in -- that in one day will house a vitrified nuclear waste black square. we just completed its fabrication in russia and i have been collaborating with brescia'-- russia's state atomic energy corporation to make the painting from the 1900s which represented this break from the iconography from humans and into a more abstract down -- spiritual zone. this is something i never thought would happen.

this is an exercise into medication and translation and i was certain it could never be and it hasn't radically been fabricated. inside -- and it has been fabricated. there is a letter that i composed to the future that was put inside a stainless steel capsule and cast inside the black square. the nuclear black square will be buried for 1000 years until it is deemed safe for humans to be in front of it, which is what that whole is for. someday -- the hole is for. someday, someone will find it and place it in that square but they will have to make a decision, are the going to break the black square to get the letter or preserve the object itself? charlie: their decision. taryn: these are precursors to the black square. they are a series about man's

inventions. they range from insignificant or very minor decisions to something as powerful and extreme as nuclear proliferation. this particular one is about, is more about a palm metaphor about human behavior. this is a bird suffering from the other destructive disorder and it has plucked all the feathers off of its delhi as a result of isolation and alienation and captivity so it can press -- express its depression in a very visible way where is ours would be less present. charlie: do you have anything that is your favorite, saying whatever it is that i do next? when you look at all you have done in the 20 years that i have known you, are remarkable life

in photography and art, does anything closer to the core of who you are? taryn: i see them as connecting. i really do. you can see from the very beginnings with the "innocents," which is how an image can be distorted by text and my intention to text for all of the time thereafter was bound to that moment, and that recognition. i never shifted from that, this relationship between text and image so it was founded there and carried form -- forward in all these different iterations. charlie: the garage is e.m. of contemporary art. it will be there until 2016. you had better get a reservation now. and a visa to go to moscow. this is an artist who has gotten a huge amount of attention.

most people think she is as good as anybody in her generation in exploring not only photography but the connection was life. thank you. taryn: thank you. charlie: pleasure to see you. thank you for joining us. see you next time. >> ♪

i am mark quant -- mark crumpton and you are watching bloomberg west. presidential front-runner, donald trump says that if elected he would put the united states first. also said america's allies need to do their part. >> our allies must contribute toward their financial, political and human cost. many of them are simply not doing so. statesok at the united as weak and forgiving and feel no obligation to honor their agreements with us. >> mr. trumps be -- beach came a