“To be silent is not neutral”: Curating collective action at The Climate Museum
Anais Reyes and Dilshanie Perera in conversation with Katharina Anzengruber and Elke Zobl
AR: The project you are referring to was called Climate Signals by Justin Brice Guariglia. It had ten huge digital road signs that flashed climate-related warnings like “CLIMATE CHANGE AT WORK” and “FOSSIL FUELING INEQUALITY.” We put them up in public parks—places you wouldn’t normally see a road sign—and it was meant to stop people in their tracks and get them thinking about climate change interrupting their daily life. It was really important for us to get that project all over the city, in all kinds of demographically diverse neighborhoods. Some locations were chosen for their high traffic, while some locations were chosen because of their high vulnerability and connections to environmental injustice. Again here, there was a focus on community, on interdisciplinarity, on accessibility, on building connections to climate, on connecting personal stories, on building a better mental frame of climate—and using the art as a starting point for those dialogues. We also had an interactive exhibit at our hub on Governors Island where people could come up with their own sign messages and see them displayed alongside others’. It allowed people to insert their own voices into the artwork and become active participants in the project.
On working with the artists, I’ll say that it’s a little bit different every time with each artist, and we find them in different ways. With Beyond Lies, for example, our Design and Curatorial Associate Saskia Randle saw illustrations by Mona Chalabi in the New York Times, but sometimes we find them on social media or through personal connections. With us, the artist has space to share artwork that is an honest manifestation of their personal experience, thoughts, or artistic practice. Then it’s our job to facilitate the audience’s interaction with the works and facilitate those connections to climate action with additional programming like interactive exhibits or youth activities. Another current project, Low Relief for High Water by Gabriela Salazar, began in 2019 after seeing her artwork at a climate-themed exhibition at Storm King Art Center. Our project with Salazar, a one-day public installation and performance, was supposed to take place on the fiftieth Anniversary of Earth Day in 2020 but then was pushed back because of Covid. Now we’re planning to have it on October 10, 2021. Gabriela doesn’t consider herself a “Climate Artist” in any formal terms. She was working within her existing practice considering the vulnerability of human-made structures, and for this piece in particular, exploring themes of shared responsibility and home. On the day of the performance, we will have tables set up nearby with postcards people can fill out to contact their representatives and where people can share their written reflections on the piece and on climate change. I think that’s how we see our role as curators at the Climate Museum. The artist has their practice, and we build off of their ideas with them to create these additional opportunities to foster deeper dialogues and connect to people to direct action and to each other.
You said it’s very important to you to bring people together and to inspire action on the climate crisis. Within our work, we are continuously confronted with the question of how we can reach people who are not aware of the climate crisis, or who are not already active. Museums reach a lot of people, but there are also a lot of people who don’t go to museums. Can you tell us a bit more about the strategies you use to engage with different people to not only get them on board but to give them a voice? Do you have specific strategies, or can you give us more examples from your work?
DP: This goes back to your question on mobility, too. What was great about Climate Signals was that the museum gallery space was out in the world and people could encounter these signs in their communities, which could spark their curiosity and engagement. There’s the possibility of just coming across the art in city space as you’re walking by and having a chance to contemplate or have a meaningful conversation about it. The signs were also translated into the languages that are most commonly spoken in each of the neighborhoods they were located in, including French, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, as well as English. Being able to have these different points of access in public space was one of the aspects that informs our current campaign against fossil fuel disinformation, Beyond Lies. The series of three posters highlighting aspects of the fossil fuel industry’s decades-long tactics of deceiving the public are going up around the five boroughs of New York City thanks to our volunteers and community partners. The campaign is also extending across the U.S. and around the world, too. The conversations people initiate as they hang up these posters in their neighborhoods is a major part of the project, in addition to the artwork itself. Participating in the campaign involves sharing ideas, information, and climate stories with members of your community: friends and family, school groups, local business owners, public librarians, etc. We make resources available for volunteers to begin these climate conversations, and it’s an opportunity for members of the public to see these charismatic images, read the poster text containing some shocking facts about the fossil fuel industry’s influence on climate policy, and take action by scanning a QR code that takes the viewer to the Beyond Lies website where we have concrete ways of taking action highlighted, like calling their congressional representatives or calling the White House to make your voice heard. We’ve been thinking of the timing of this campaign and how well it ties in with the conversations going on right now in U.S. politics on climate and infrastructure. The ability to encounter these posters and the campaign out in the world, even by chance, gets the public involved. It might not always be people who are looking for climate-related pursuits but it’s even better when we can bring new people into these conversations and spark curiosity.
AR: And everyone will have a different response that we can’t predict, but there is power in all of them. Maybe someone sees the poster and they’re interested in immediately taking action. Or maybe they don’t call their representatives, or they don’t take the actions, but they’re starting to think about climate in relation to their neighborhood and maybe they’ll bring it up to a friend or post on social media. Over time, as climate becomes more of a familiar topic, people will start to see it as something they can talk about and engage in more passionately or at least unabashedly. And that’s a different kind of power that we must recognize we have as a museum. For example, going back to the high schoolers in CALP—they’re super interested in climate and taking action, and even though they are still learning, they are also sharing their work at the Climate Museum with their parents, friends, and grandparents. Not every grandparent will call their representative, but now they know someone who is taking action and they will also tell others about it. That escalation builds up and spreads out over time. Eventually we hope that we’ll get to a place where our entire culture has had this revelation that climate and sustainability must be a constant focus built into everything we do—that things must be done differently than they are now. Rather than just working toward the accumulation of climate-friendly actions, it really is pushing us toward a major cultural shift.
Dilshanie Perera, Anais Reyes, Katharina Anzengruber, Elke Zobl ( 2021): “To be silent is not neutral”: Curating collective action at The Climate Museum. Anais Reyes and Dilshanie Perera in conversation with Katharina Anzengruber and Elke Zobl. In: p/art/icipate – Kultur aktiv gestalten # 12 , https://www.p-art-icipate.net/to-be-silent-is-not-neutral-curating-collective-action-at-the-climate-museum/
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