Mediaworks

Collaborative Project: Creative Approaches to Climate Change.

On January 30th, Evergreen will participate in Focus the Nation, a nation wide day of action intended to place issues of climate change in the center of the 2008 election season. In anticipation of this, we would like to “focus” our minds and come up with creative ways to influence the current discourse about climate change in the public sphere.

As media artists and filmmakers, you hold certain power to influence the public discourse. Paul Horton of Climate Solutions has pointed out that the alarming, “shock and awe” news about the fate of our planet tends to paralyze people rather than spur them to action. People generally do not find the motivation to change if they are depressed. Cynicism usually doesn’t lead to productive action either. But if they feel hopeful and empowered, people can do significant things.

The science on climate change is pretty much accepted. The scientific community agrees that global warming exists and that humans have contributed to it. We don’t need to prove it, but we do need to motivate people to get involved in changing habits of consumption, as well as the societal, economic and political institutions that have brought us to this point.

For this project, we are asking that you and three collaborators explore creative and constructive ways to educate people about some aspect of the climate change issue. But most of all we’d like you to experiment with ways to inspire them to take action themselves. You might consider doing a piece about simple and amazing solutions that people have already implemented or about someone in your community who is a model of taking action or a witness to it. You might dream up an interactive, installation or performance piece that engages the community. You might research a specific aspect of the problem and present a proposal for it’s solution using artistic means.

You will present your project this fall during one of our Friday meetings weeks 5, 6, 8 and 9. If you are interested in contributing it to the Focus the Nation events on January 30th, we can help facilitate that. If you want to keep working on it and develop it into your spring quarter independent project, that is also an option.

Below are the assignment parameters. After that are some ideas you may consider (or not) and a list of articles and web sites that might help you brainstorm.

Assignment parameters:
Multimedia: that means including two or more types of media
Performative: live bodies present, engaging the audience. Interactivity is a possibility.
10 minutes, give or take 2 minutes
Collaborative: all in group contribute. Group members are responsible for gathering equipment and other resources needed, for signing up for a day to present, and for letting Lauren and Danny know what your presentation will involve.
Title
Artists’ statement: Due the day of the presentation, describing the intent and strategy employed.
Group Self-evaluation: due within a week of presenting the project; how well do you think you fulfilled your intent? What worked? What didn’t? What would you do differently? What did you learn about the collaborative process?

Some Possible ideas:
Repurposing*, repo-history; Raising awareness questionnaire (what are you already doing for the planet?); Impact of sea level rise locally; Buy local campaigns; Carbon footprints and pollution potentials of media equipment and processes; Climate Change as the foremost human rights issue of our time; relationship of mindfulness to over-consumption; Embedded Energy; Implications of biofuels. i.e. Toxic Racism report; Good news report (community victories); Mockery of misuses of scientific discourses/inquiry; Toxic Racism Tour (umbrella audio tour) or other audio installation; Re-fashioning “old clothes”, exchange, sewing for fun; Recycling gifts (hate your Christmas/birthday present?); Free Range Grains; Molecular Invasion; GenTerra,;
Carpooling, bicycling, taking the bus.

*Repurposing objects and environments refers to the practice of recycling materials for artistic projects. It so happens that a lot of ideas are fully functional.

Articles and web sites of interest:

Two articles by Curtis White:
“The Idols of Environmentalism”
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/233
“The Ecology of Work”
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/267

Other interesting Orion articles:
“Everybody’s Doing It: Join your fellow guests in helping to save the environment”
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/329/

“Self-Portrait as Revealed by Trash”
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/358/

“COLD RUSH The coming fight for the melting north” from Harper's
http://0-proquest.umi.com.cals.evergreen.edu:80/pqdweb?did=1330516981&sid=1&Fmt=3&clientId=10024&RQT=309&VName=PQD

http://greencodeproject.org/

http://www.climatesolutions.org/

“It's not easy selling green” http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/09/25/green_marketing/


Positive Futures Network:
http://www.yesmagazine.org/default.asp?ID=9

The Earth Charter Initiative
http://www.earthcharter.org/


http://www.worldchanging.com/about/ http://www.sightline.org

The Critical Art Ensemble’s work on activist arts, especially their book Digital Resistance, available for free download at:
http://www.critical-art.net/books/digital/index.html
Especially recommended: Chapter 4 Observations on Collective Cultural Action

And the work the Critical Art Ensemble has done w/Beatriz Dacosta http://www.beatrizdacosta.net/projects.php