Wals 'r' us (2020)

TO THE FOREFRONT:
Making the (in)Visible Affective: Ways of Sparking Engagement with Climate Change.

The call-and-response project, TO THE FOREFRONT, explores translations of climate change into different media, and their effectiveness in sparking engagement with climate change.

In the lecture, 'Making the invisible visible: art and science for involving the public in climate change', uploaded to the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona website on 21 June 2017 [Accessed 15 October 2020], Lucy Wood states: "[...] climate change is a real thing, but we're not engaging with it." She also says: "The resources and technology to move towards a post-carbon society are in fact all there. Just about. What we lack is a broad civic movement of engagement to get behind this transition."

In response to the above, this ongoing project asks: How can art help spark engagement with climate change? Which images, videos and sounds that make climate change visible affect us in order to spark our engagement? What reaches us in a way that makes us act? And, what can cut through the noise and reach us at all?

In 'Our Planet' shown on Netflix, the invisible; climate change, has been made visible through a scene of a large number of walruses on a piece of land, rather than on ice. The distressing scene of some of those walruses falling from cliffs they never should have climbed has been effective in shaking up viewers from their passiveness in front of the screen, and - if only in some and temporarily - created an urge to act against global warming. The question is, is it enough to spark ongoing engagement with climate change?

Wals 'r' us (2020) uses fabrics, projected images and emotive sounds to bring climate change to the forefront of our minds, from "far away" to unavoidably close. 

Image: Printed beach towel.

Installation view during 'That's Hot' on 1 June 2023 at Studio Matter of Time.