MASS PUBLIC RITUAL
"What do you love and hope to never lose to Climate Chaos?"
The Climate Ribbon is a participatory arts ritual to grieve what we each stand to lose to Climate Chaos, and affirm our solidarity as we unite to fight against it.
People from around the world are writing onto ribbons what they most love in their life—”Next year’s harvest” or “Miami, my city”—that they don’t want to lose to Climate Chaos. In the Climate Ribbon arts ritual, participants are invited to find a stranger’s ribbon, read it aloud, have the group answer “We are with you,” or “We’ve got your back!” Then they tie the ribbon onto their wrists and take it home with them, committing themselves to work to beat back Climate Chaos so that our worst fears never come true. Together, our commitments weave a giant thread connecting all of us us as we work for a healthy, sustainable planet.
The Climate Ribbon was first installed as the final destination of The People's Climate March in New York City in 2014. It was installed as a giant tree sculpture in Paris, France in 2015. Since it's debut numerous communities have taken it upon themselves to create their own version of the ritual in their own locality. The website provides a toolkit that allows anyone to become a part of the project.
FULL WEBSITE
As the founder of the project with Andrew Boyd, as well as the lead designer, it was clear that this would be an enormous undertaking to try and build an installation able to pop up during mass mobilizations, while inviting tens of thousands of people to participate by experiencing something intimate and personal, and share it with the world. We had to build a team.
For the debut New York City, we collaborated with the artist SWOON in order to realize our vision of an enclosed, sacred space at the end of the massive street mobilization.
For the COP 21 in Paris, we formed a design team to build an easily deployable, but large tree sculpture, that was then fabricated assembled in an arts collective workspace outside the center of town. It was then installed in numerous locations in Paris. and had thousands of participants.After the event was over, it has found a permanent home in as the central sculpture in the middle of town inside an automous utopian community in Souther France.
Special thanks to the many who were essential to realizing this vision.
Created by Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd.
Co-architects: Matteo Fernandez Muro, John Swain
Builders: (NYC) Logal Price, (Paris) David Ledorze,
Coordinators: Kate Mc Neely, Ileia Burgos, Sandrine Catteau
Video and photo Walter Hergt, LJ Amsterdam, Michael Premo, Josiah Werning
Live event leaders: Rae Abileah, Gibran Rivera,
Special thanks to: John Sellers, Lizz Winstead, Swoon, Betsy Richards and the many good folks at Creative Change that helped give birth to this project.
