Whether it’s through education, perspective-shifting installations, scientific research, or direct action, art is very much a part of the global-warming dialogue and this has never been more apparent than during COP15. Beyond the flock of individual installations and exhibitions currently showing in Copenhagen, numerous COP15 focused exhibitions and spin-offs are appearing beyond the borders of Denmark. Over the next week Inhabitat will be jumping into all that is COP15 eco-art, but before we do that we’d love to give you a sampling of our favorite standouts thus far!
Exhibits in Copenhagen
Rethink: Contemporary Art and Climate Change
This touring exhibition has been nominated to the Nordic Exhibition of the Year, and it definitely anchors this global discussion in Copenhagen. Each section of the exhibition asks visitors to “rethink” culture from information, to relationships, to safety gear, to alternative futures.
Outdoor and Site-Specific Installations
CO2 Cubes
You may have caught our earlier post about this ton of carbon dioxide installed by Alfio Bonanno and Christophe Cornubert. More than a static block, it started moving and talking to people near the Copenhagen Planetarium on Monday. The block certainly gives its visitors a lot to think about, confronting them with the amount of carbon they produce over a month, or for those Americans, over two weeks.
New Life Copenhagen
Is hosting a guest an artistic act? According to New Life Copenhagen it is. Their proposal asks Copenhagen residents to join in on the festivities by inviting COP15 visitors to stay in their homes. Along with the kindness of strangers, New Life will also host performances, rituals, and in the event of an untimely Denmark death, the chance to take part in an ecological burial.
Glowing Climate: Light Art
Anyone who has changed their incandescent light bulbs to CFLs (or seen one the PSAs telling us to do so) understands how important reducing light consumption is to climate change. As a fascinating Orestad city-wide project, ”Glowing Climate“ proposes that we begin to analyze our relationship to light, energy consumption and the climate.
Treehuggers in Copenhagen
We’ve covered these embracing woven tree-lovers before. Installed by international artists Wiktor Szostalo and Agnieszka Gradzik, these poetic tree-lovers have finally found their way to the streets of Copenhagen in the form of Lonely Tree-Lonely People, a gathering of tree-lovers; and Praying for the Victims of Clear-Cutting, a woven circle of figures holding hands and mourning trees.
COP15 Exhibitions Outside of Copenhagen
Impact By Degrees
Australia has consistently been a leader in developing sustainable standards, and this COP15 directed exhibition is no exception. Impact by Degrees is a collection of works created by Australian and Australian-American media artists that include short films, photographs, software and installation projects that examine our relationship to nature and the root causes of climate change.
Earth: Art of a Changing World
This exhibition has been on our radar for a while. Displaying works from 30 contemporary artists, this exhibit showcases landscapes, images and memes that address global warming. Curators of this impressive collection worked steadily to gather a breadth of work that examines natural forces, the security of habitat, the perils of the current age, and the potential for hope.
C Words: Carbon, Climate, Capital, Culture
Finally, it’s worth mentioning the massive COP15-focused undertaking by Platform, a powerful force in ecology and performance art. In a project called C Words, this two-month lead-up to COP15 consisted of a series of lectures, performances, installations, discussions, workshops, and other events that thoroughly broke down and analyzed the topic climate change. While C Words has already concluded, the residual impact of the initiative has remained stellar.
Funny design, but I am not sure if it would safe the climate