General Assembly (Dear Climate)

2018

Flags, cedar posts

Core Collaborators: Una Chaudhuri, Fritz Ertl, Oliver Kellhammer, Marina Zurkow
Curated by Nora Lawrence
Documentation: Jerry L. Thompson

Commissioned by Storm King Arts Center, New Windsor, New York
For the “Indicators: Artists on Climate Change” exhibition at Storm King

https://dearclimate.net/installations/general-assembly

We want to create a public space that signals—and celebrates—a future world of multi-species collaboration. At the UN General Assembly, there’s a seat for every nation. In our General Assembly of the future, there’ll be a seat at the table for all species and all things.

Dear Climate aims to guide audiences through a three-part process: meeting the climate, befriending the climate, and becoming the climate. In so doing, we hope to work “against notions of human separateness, human exceptionalism, and human centrality.” We chose to create a rhythmic and ceremonial procession of flags, reminiscent of those at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and place it around Storm King’s tram circle. Imagine this as a gateway to a multi-species ‘United Nations,’ with a seat for each member of the our planet’s ecosystem–animals, plants, geophysical forces. Working well with the climate (beyond “solutionism”) will arise when all humans acknowledge that we are no more than earthlings along with all of the other species. Dear Climate envisions these twenty flags as enacting a call and response: the black flags posit current problems, and the white flags respond with creative solutions.

Find out more info on the Dear Climate website