Through the Climate Artist’s Lens

Following are profiles of a few climate artists and how their works explore our relationship with the environment. Though the artists mentioned here create various types of work, this blog focuses on their installations in urban spaces where we are most likely to forget our relationship with nature.

River Rooms by Stacy Levy, 2018

STACY LEVY – The site specific installations of Stacy Levy visualize natural elements such as wind, rain, sunlight, and waterways. These installations are weaved into urban design and placed in public spaces. They invite the public to interact with the natural world that lives and breathes alongside them, but is often unnoticed. Levy’s series of works called Tides are installed in city parks. “River Rooms” are boat shaped structures placed along the Schuylkill River. They allow people of the city to sit by the river and observe it all year round. Similarly, “Tide Field” in the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia and “Tide Flowers” in the Hudson River in New York are floating devices that respond to the river’s tides. They change based on how high or low the water in the river is. Both installations are placed where city dwellers can see the rivers change throughout the day. It’s a reminder that the rivers are alive even in densely populated urban areas.

Reduce Speed Now! by Justin Brice Guarriglia, 2019

JUSTIN BRICE GUARRIGLIA – Messages about the existential crisis of climate change are brought to public spaces through Justin Brice Guarriglia’s LED light installations and marquees. Guarriglia reminds us that “We are the asteroids” that are threatening our world. His project, Eco-Haikus for Marquees, places haikus about climate change at the entrance of theaters in Los Angeles and New York City. Guarriglia draws inspiration from the writing of Bruno Latour and attempts to make abstract ideas about climate change more accessible to the public. Reduce Speed Now is another project of Guarriglia’s. It’s an installment of solar powered LED lights that share messages from climate activists, artists, philosophers from around the world. This project was created for a 2019 Earth Day event in London and it invited the public to share their own messages through the LED light installations during the event.

Ice Watch by Olafur Eliasson, 2015

OLAFUR ELIASSON – When looking through the images of Ice Watch and how people interact with it, we see a combination of spectacle and mourning. Olafur Eliasson created Ice Watch, an installation, by transporting floating icebergs from the fjords of Greenland to public spaces in London and Paris. It confronts the public with the fact that the glaciers are melting in a more intimate way. The installation evokes the cathartic feeling of time running out and watching something bigger than us slowly fall apart. While walking through these icebergs, some people are in awe and can’t help but take selfies with them. Others kiss, hug, or hold the icebergs in a regretful way because they understand what we’re losing. For most of us, the melting glaciers is something that is happening far away. Watching videos of glaciers melting in the news or in documentaries doesn’t begin to describe the profoundness of this loss and the danger associated with it. Eliasson tries to change that with “Ice Watch”. 

5 thoughts on “Through the Climate Artist’s Lens

  1. Teresa Scala

    Thank you for sharing these, Sazia! I am especially moved by the visuals from Eliasson’s Ice Watch, Greenland’s actual floating icebergs transported to urban spaces. The images of human interaction with these literal pieces of our past are so moving. Pondering ice cores on a human scale, I think this is an elemental way to reach people. We need more of these interactive types of exhibits. The power of art—especially through visual arts, cinema, fiction, drama—is what will capture hearts and minds. No pictures of polar bears (as Naomi Klein mentions), but the actual shrinking ice in real time: powerful!!

    Teresa Scala | Special Projects Administrator | Office of the Provost |
    The City College of New York |Phone: 212-650-6590| tscala@ccny.cuny.edu

    From: Sazia (Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Climate Change)
    Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2020 10:01 AM
    To: Teresa Scala
    Subject: [EXTERNAL] Blog Post – Through the Climate Artist’s Lens

  2. Carol Joo Lee

    Climate art installation sites as a place of mourning is an idea that captivates me. I do think a physical objects/ spaces that impel us to confront our losses is critical in the healing process.

  3. Mo Muzammal

    Thank you for this amazing overview of these Climate artists and their brilliant work! I’m particularly struck by Eliasson’s Ice Watch, as I’m reminded of “everywhen,” of how time can be captured in all its interconnected, multidimensional glory (the past, present and future converge in a single moment) at once. In interacting with a glacier from the fjords of Greenland, spectators experience the formulation of a body of Ice from the past, the present melting which shows us the tragic future of these icebergs.

    A project like this also shows how far yet near we are to the tragedy of nature. Having grown up fairly close to the beaches of Long Island, each year, whenever I walk on the sand, the rising sea levels become noticeably clearer to me. I feel guilty and perhaps this stems from knowing what the past has led to and the future will lead to. This experience of guilt feels so human yet is so externalized and it’s something around which artists like Eliasson based their art.

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