Climate Change meet Art

I first was officially introduced to installation art during my landscape architecture theory course at Cal Poly. Each fall for several years LA 320 students rubbed Cal Poly students' faces in the reality of the world outside our little hidden town. We erected these installations overnight and watched students interact with them by day. It was for many the most demanding, overwhelming, emotional, and interesting class we had and for a few weeks each fall we challenged our students to think about green space, gay marriage, pollution, and a host of other issues.

Since that class, art and design installation as a form of activism and education has become near and dear to my heart. Art can be an incredibly powerful tool in bringing awareness of ideas and events to people and provides a great jumping off point to educate people and get them to do some introspective thinking.

Its with a smile on my face that I see artists taking on the challenge of climate change, here are some that have been in the news this year:


January 2009: Eden, a British television channel devoted to all things nature, floated a giant polar bear sculpture down the Thames River in London to bring awareness of of climate change, thinning ice, the demise of polar bears, and their new tv series (got to give it to them, pretty brilliant advertising).

May 2009: the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) placed 200 cardboard sea turtle mockups on a beach in England. While their goal was to alert people to the travesty that is poaching and to teach the public about ways to avoid supporting black market and souvenier animal products, I think it also helps raise some awareness about the diversity of life forms on this rock of ours, and how precarious it all is.

June - October 2009: The Schonbrunn Zoo in Vienna (the oldest zoo in the world, and host to one of the best parties I've ever attended) has let 2 artists loose in 6 of their animal enclosures to show the effects of climate change on wildlife. The images are pretty iconic, and to check out some more, see treehugger.com's coverage. Also, I think this is interesting in that artists are providing environmental enrichment in these enclosures while teaching the public about climate change.

October 2009: Artist Nele Azevedo of Brasil did an installation of 1,000 little ice men perched on the steps of the Berlin Concert Hall. The installation was funded by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to coincide with the release of their report Global Climate Change. This is not the first time Azevedo has done this installation, she originally did these as critiques of the use of mounuments and public space in urban areas. Nevertheless, little melting men seem pretty provacative and have gotten people talking about climate change.