Thursday, December 21, 2006

"En enda värld" (There is only one world)


En enda värld" (there is only one world) was the theme of the 1972 Stockholm United Nations Conference on the Human Environment. The phrase perfectly frames the concept behind my Antarctic installations, and serves as invitation for you to share the environmental challenges you are facing in your part of our world.

Please post a message (make sure to say what city your writing from) describing the environmental issues impacting your local community. I will select some of those testimonies and use them in installations I am creating in the South Pole (see more below)

Thanks,
X

MORE ON CORTADA'S LONGITUDINAL PROJECT IN THE SOUTH POLE:

Cortada will take some of the messages posted on this site and write them on the soles of twelve pairs of black shoes. These shoes will be placed inches apart around the South Pole, aligned with the longitude corresponding to the location on Earth where the message originated. Placing the shoes next to each other as a proxy for people across the globe, the artist conceptually diminishes the distance between them. We are one global community. Creating this installation in a continent with no borders, the artist aims to diminish the man-made barriers in the world above it. Voices simultaneously stand in their place (longitude) around the world and inches away from one another (see: http://www.cortada.com/antarctica/longitudinal/).

Other messages (eco-pleas, solutions) posted on the blog will be used to implement the Wind Words project, where Cortada will speak words from across the globe into Antarctica's katabatic winds, conceptually sending them "upwards" towards the rest of the world. (see: http://www.cortada.com/antarctica/windwords/).

New World School of the Arts students in Miami are also using myspace,com to help the artist collect these global messages, see http://www.myspace.com/ninetys and http://only-one-world.blogspot.com/

2 comments:

reachercreature said...

I live in Miami Florida which has seen a building boom in the past decade based not on human need or concern for the environment but on greed and speculation. I am deeply concerned of the long term consequences this unbridled development will have on what little natural environment still exists in south Florida. The increase strain on it's infrastructure will mean more energy use for our homes, businesses and automobiles. Also, the more we build, the more impermeable the environment becomes to the natural cycle of water replenishment of our already fragile aquifer. In my opinion, I put the blame on our capitalistic system in which the right to make money trumps everything else, especially our precious natural environment.

Andrew Reach

carlos cortada said...

Hello from Miami.
We are all so very proud of you guys and cant't wait for your return so we can share the experience.We keep reading all emails and blogs like opening up a new christmas present.
Wishing you all the best
Charlie and Maritza