EDIT: I see Paul Kingsnorth has just blogged this photo at the Dark Mountain Project with the caption: “Which is obviously a relief…â€
… though the sign on the door says “Closed.â€
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Copenhagen
CO2 Cube
We interview Deanne LaRue and Scott Mason today. They are both working on the CO2 Cube by the Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen. We’re saving the INterview for later, but here is some footage as it was getting dark about then once the sun is nowhere to be seen.
My Copenhagen hosts…
I met the family who have agreed to host my brief stay in Copenhagen. They were warm, and extremely welcoming. If the idea behind wooloo.org’s New Life Copenhagen initiative – which matches visitors to host families – is to embody the a new openness, then it may well be working. They are not the sort of people whose paths would normally cross with mine; Lars is involved in local politics as a right-wing politician. Gitte, his partner, says the Danish rarely invite people into their homes. But that is the point. Last night, over tea, we talked, all thoroughly enjoying the strangeness of it.
I wonder if we will get around to completing the questions in the New Life Copenhagen Guest/Host book that was left by my bed for us all to fill inF?
Would you describe yourself as an argumentative person?
Have you ever discriminated against somebody?
Have you ever been a victim of war?
Find an item in the home of your host that you find strange.
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Live from Copenhagen
Perhaps “Live” is a bit misused here, but we are in Copenhagen right now. I got in yesterday morning and Miranda, after some delays, made it last night. My host, Sara Vilslev, and I made it to Downtown Hopenhagen and met the Wooloo.org/New Life Copenhagen Guys. We also saw a number of pavilions promoting greening living in creative ways.
We’re about to head out for a fullday, but I wanted to share some pictures from our night before we get to far along!
Bikes are the standard in Copenhagen.
Downtown Hopenhagen lit up
Martin from Wooloo.org records pledges to never drink Coca-Cola again for the Yes Men.
Bike power Disco.
My contract for a sustainable burial, should I die during COP15.
That is not Brad Pitt on stage at Hopenhagen.
Copenhagen and radical cycle culture
At Culture|Futures listening to the architect Jan Gehl talking about how bicycles have humanised Copenhagen, and how crucial they will be to the new urbanism.
Interesting how many hits this YouTube video has been getting in the last few days.
The boggling incredulity with which the video’s American viewers seem to greet the vision of bicyclists (“LOL socialism in action.Europe will soon be going back to the stone age. The sooner, the betterâ€) is a great reminder of a how wide the cultural gulf is, sometimes.
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Climate changes: Steve Waters interview
Many had considered climate change an impossible subject to dramatise. But two new plays that opened at the Bush in May proved them wrong.
Steve Waters talks to Robert Butler about ‘The Contingency Plan’, his double-bill of plays about climate change, and how they were inspired by James Lovelock, the 1953 floods, and the Transition Town Handbook.
http://www.ashdendirectory.org.uk/featuresView.asp?pageIdentifier=2009122_59406680&view=
To coincide with the UN Conference in Copenhagen, Radio 3 also broadcasts a version of ‘The Contingency Plan’ (this Sunday, 8pm) and two readings of the play, with the original cast, will be produced at the Bush on 15 and 18 December.
CSPA December 09 Newsletter
On Friday we both head to Copenhagen for the New Life Copenhagen Festival, the arts festival surrounding COP15, which began on Monday. During our stay in Europe, we’ll also be checking in on Future Arcola and a project for the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. December will be a very exciting, if not a bit chilly, month. We also have open calls for the next edition of the Quarterly and Mammut, which will be guest edited by the CSPA. As we approach the New Year, we hope that your winter is cozy (for the right reasons) and that we’ll be seeing you often in 2010!
Ian Garrett & Miranda Wright
CSPA Directors
CSPA December 09 Newsletter.
Was The Wave really the “turning point�
Saturday’s The Wave demo saw crowds of up to 50,000 people coming out onto the streets to demand a result from governments on climate change at Copenhagen. That’s not a shabby number, and the organisers deserve praise for getting people out onto the streets in a season which has been unbelievably filthy.
But we have to be honest: 50,000 is a decent crowd. It’s not an unstoppable mandate for action.
In the history of British demonstrations, 50,000 is a medium-sized demo. In the 1980s, at the peak of concern about Cruise missiles, CND demonstrations attracted crowds of a quarter of a million. The Countryside Alliance’s strangely unfocussed march in 2002 attracted between 400,000 and one million people. The following year’s Iraq march brought between one and two million out onto the streets.
The Director of Stop Climate Chaos called the march “a turning pointâ€. But really, the size of the crowds The Wave managed only underlines again how hard it is to engage the broader public with this issue.
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New Life Copenhagen: hospitality as art
I am soon to be assigned to a guest house in Copenhagen by the remarkable New Life Copenhagen art project. For five days people I don’t know, who don’t know me, will put me up durng my stay in Copenhagen.
Everything I hear from them, while I wait, makes me more and more admiring of this enterprise.
The Danes feel they have a reputation for being an unhospitable place. New Life Copenhagen has decided to turn this reputation on its head with a phenomenal act of generosity, opening the doors of their homes to 3,000 activists, NGO workers and delegates who are arriving in Denmark over the coming weeks to attend the pivotal COP15 conference. It’s a spirit of openness you can only hoped will be matched by the governmental delegates.
In this act alone, Woloo.org’s Sixten Kai Nielsen and Martin Rosengaard, who created New Life Copenhagen may have already created the most significant artwork to align itself with the COP15 process:
The explain themselves: Instead of inviting artists to contribute art for a traditional museum exhibition, we have chosen to utilize hospitality and the human encounter as an exhibition platform. The purpose of the festival is to create a breeding ground for alternative ways of living together. Individual solutions are not enough. In order to stop climate changes, we have to rethink our way of life collectively.
The artists Superflex, Signa and Marisa Olson are also creating work as part of New Life Copenhagen. Olson will host a live event at Copenhagen’s City Square, Signa are going to produce a guest book in which we can all evaluate each others’ lifestyles, and Superflex are going to ask all of us to commit to a climate-friendly burial in the case that we die during our visit to Copenhagen.
Which is one of those committments I kind of hope I’m not going to have to live up to.
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Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators Announces First LDI Green Awards
Bob Usdin of Showman Fabricators, who organized LDI Green Day and the awards for best green product and best green production at this last year’s show in Orlando, is seen here announcing the recipients of those awards.
As a judge for the awards I had the opportunity to get into some great conversations about the products that were are weren’t on the show floor the weekend before Thanksgiving. I also got to ask questions about products that WEREN’T on the show floor.
We’ll be posting more from our LDI wrap-up before Miranda and I are off to Copenhagen to cover the arts festivities around COP15, primarily New Life Copenhagen by wooloo.org, Â and maybe get over to Arcola for the launch of their new facilities.
If you need to catch up on all of the greening of LDI here are some links for you to check out:
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/11/19/2009-green-day-ldi
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/10/28/ldi-and-sustainability-part-i
https://www.sustainablepractice.org/2009/09/28/green-awards-at-ldi