FORWARD: Issue #6: Climate

Public Art Now

Leading Voices Sharing Public Art of the Moment

How do artists respond to the urgencies related to social, climate, and spatial injustice, both in our cities and in rural contexts? How can public art create spaces to process, grieve, and challenge these injustices? How can public art support us to rehearse new ways of being together, resisting together, and caring for ourselves, our communities, and the futures of the spaces we live in?

Some of the projects featured here deal with the impact of the exploitation of people and natural resources and the effects of neoliberalization and colonization on our daily lives. Others extend an embodied learning experience, working with surprising collaborators both human and nonhuman, and introducing radical ways of sharing knowledge, reinventing what it means to organize, create, and learn from each other.

Two ongoing historical works are included, perhaps not what you’d expect in a section called “Public Art Now.” I wanted to include them because for me, they are holding space for the slower, impactful trust-building practices that I feel need to be remembered.

—Amal Khalaf, guest curator

At a 2019 Oakland Lead to Life alchemy ceremony in collaboration with Anti Police-Terror Project (APTP), ritual dancers wash and rebuke the spirit of a gun. Photo by Ayse Gursoz, courtesy Lead to Life.

01: Touch Sanitation Performance & Seven Work Ballets

A digital sign in a subway station in NYC reads "Dear service worker, thank you so keeping NYC alive! For-forever..."

As seen at the NYC World Trade Center (WTC) Cortlandt station in 2020, Dear Service Worker by Mierle Laderman Ukeles references her earlier Touch Sanitation Performance. During the original 11-month performance from 1979–80, every time Ukeles shook a sanitation worker’s hand, she said, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive!” Dear Service Worker debuted on Outfront customer info screens, Customer Information Control Systems (CICs), and triptychs on Tuesday, September 8, 2020. Photo by Marc A. Hermann, MTA New York City Transit / flickr / CC-by-2.0.

Touch Sanitation Performance By Mierle Laderman Ukeles

New York

1979–80

Probably the most influential artist, to my understanding of the potential for public art, is Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who wrote the seminal Manifesto for Maintenance Art 1969! Proposal for an Exhibition “CARE” in 1969. I could not choose one project as this is a durational practice, and one that is so inspiring for committed political practice in the arts. In 1977, Ukeles became the unsalaried artist in residence for the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY), a position she still holds, which enabled her to introduce radical public art into an urban municipal infrastructure.

In 1979, Ukeles developed the Touch Sanitation Performance with the official support of the Department of Sanitation, in which she spent 11 months shaking hands with and thanking 8,500 of New York City’s “sanmen.” The artist would arrive at the DSNY at 6:00 a.m. daily and map out her routes. She would then spend 8- to 16-hour days aboard a DSNY truck, sweeping through the city, visiting sanitation crews, stopping to shadow workers at garages, landfills, offices, and street corners, interviewing them, and delivering speeches about her own work and the value of theirs. Every time she shook a sanitation worker’s hand she said, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive!” Engaging in public space, Touch Sanitation humanized this often ignored and thankless work and conveyed the importance of a traditionally devalued sector of labor.

Three people reach down to grab black garbage bags off the street in New York City.

Touch Sanitation Performance 1979–80. Citywide performance with 8,500 sanitation workers across all 59 NYC Sanitation districts, May 14, 1980. Photo by Deborah Freedman ©MLU courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery NY.

Two people sweep the asphalt of an intersection in New York City with light puddles in some areas.

Touch Sanitation Performance 1979–80. Citywide performance with 8,500 sanitation workers across all 59 NYC Sanitation districts, April 15, 1980. Photo by Deborah Freedman ©MLU courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery NY.

In black and white, a woman tries to copy a sanitation worker's stance as they stand behind a garbage truck.

Touch Sanitation Performance (1979–80) by Mierle Laderman Ukeles was a citywide performance with 8,500 sanitation workers across all 59 NYC Sanitation districts. The artist would arrive at the DSNY at 6:00 a.m. daily and map out her routes. She spent 8- to 16-hour days aboard a DSNY truck, sweeping through the city, visiting sanitation crews, stopping to shadow workers at garages, landfills, offices, and street corners, interviewing them, and delivering speeches about her own work and the value of theirs. Photo by Marcia Bricker courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

Every time she shook a sanitation worker’s hand she said, “Thank you for keeping New York City alive!”

A woman stands on the road while a line of white garbage trucks passes her.

Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Touch Sanitation Performance (1979–80). Photo by Marcia Bricker courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

As seen at the WTC Cortlandt station, Dear Service Worker by Mierle Laderman Ukele debuts on Outfront triptychs on Tuesday, September 8, 2020. Photo by Marc A. Hermann, MTA New York City Transit / flickr / CC-by-2.0.

Seven Work Ballets By Mierle Laderman Ukeles

New York and Pittsburgh, US Givors, France Rotterdam, Netherlands Tokamachi, Japan

1983–2012

Ukeles’s worker ballets were a series of seven large-scale choreographed performances involving sanitation trucks and equipment, workers, trucks, barges, and hundreds of tons of recyclables and steel, which took place between 1983 and 2012 in New York and Pittsburgh, US; Givors, France; Rotterdam, Netherlands; and Tokamachi, Japan. The first ballet was created for the first New York City Art Parade in 1983. Named Sanitation Celebrations, it took place in three parts. In part 1, The Social Mirror, a garbage collection truck clad in mirrors drove through Madison Avenue; it was followed by part 2, Ballet Méchanique for Six Mechanical Sweepers, with six mechanical sweepers pirouetting behind the mirrored truck. This performance culminated in part 3, Ceremonial Sweep, in which sanitation workers swept the streets behind the vehicles in a collaboratively choreographed movement. A further six “ballets' took place in cities around the world wherein skillful truck drivers performed elaborate choreographies with their huge vehicles. The finale was Snow Workers Ballet in Japan, featuring a complex public choreography of 13 snow vehicles.

A man stands in front of six large yellow snowplows in a field in Tokamachi, Japan. There is a large crowd looking at him while he faces the intimidating snow plows.

Dance of the Rotaries. Rotaries Shooters, Dance Movement II of Snow Workers Ballet, by Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Tokamachi Japan, 2012. Photo courtesy Ronald Feldman Gallery NY.

02: Climavore: On Tidal Zones

A man in a yellow rain coat and tall boots sits on a structure of cages just at the surface of the ocean while another man stands behind him in motion, looking to his right.

Climavore asks how our food security is affected in times of increasingly violent climate change. Photo by Ruth Clark, courtesy Ars Electronica / flickr / CC-by-NC-ND 2.0.

By Cooking Sections

Isle of Skye, Scotland

2015–present

Climavore: On Tidal Zones, part of the Cooking Sections collective’s long-term project Climavore, sets out to envision seasons of food production and consumption that react to human-induced climatic events and landscape alterations rather than traditional understandings of the four seasons. Climavore: On Tidal Zones responds to the dead zones created by salmon farms in the Isle of Skye, Scotland, and beyond. Working with local stakeholders, from fish farmers to local residents, it aims to help transition away from salmon farming and develop alternative aquacultures by working with bivalves and seaweeds that clean the water by breathing.

The installation in Skye is an “oyster table” at high tide, which allows its 1,000 oysters to breathe, each of them filtering 120 liters of seawater per day. At low tide, it emerges above the sea and functions as a dining table for humans. These meals at the table—breakfast, lunch, or dinner, according to the tides—are shared by local collaborators, scientists, and politicians, and feature tastings of Climavore ingredients: ocean cleaners such as seaweeds, oysters, clams, and mussels. As part of the meals, discussions and workshops are held to imagine alternative ways of living and working on the island that are regenerative and sustainable.

Since the project began, a network of restaurants on the island have replaced farmed salmon on their menus with Climavore dishes. The project has become a permanent installation, The Climavore Station, which provides advice on opening oyster farms, shares marine research on aquacultures, and trains young cooks and future oyster farmers on the island to imagine a new future for the island and its social and marine ecosystem.

The Cooking Sections collective was established in 2013 by Daniel Fernández Pascual and Alon Schwabe, a London-based duo of spatial practitioners, exploring the systems that organize the world through food.

A large group of people sit on a bench made of cages that sits in a shallow ocean tide with a green hill with houses in the background. The people are wearing fishing gear and tall waterproof boots.

Sited on the Isle of Sky in Scotland, from 2015 to present, an “oyster table” at high tide allows its 1,000 oysters to breathe, each filtering 120 liters of seawater per day. At low tide, it emerges above the sea and functions as a dining table for humans. These meals at the table—breakfast, lunch, or dinner, according to the tides—are shared by local stakeholders, scientists, and politicians, and feature tastings of Climavore ingredients: ocean cleaners such as seaweeds, oysters, clams, and mussels. Photo courtesy the artists and by Colin Hattersley / Wikimedia commons / CC-by-SA 4.0.

A birds eye view of a structure made of cages that resenbles a table and bench sits in wet sand during low tide with green sea plants growing near and udner it and people sitting on the beches.

Oyster table aerial view

A birds eye view of a structure made of cages that resenbles a table and bench sits in wet sand during low tide.

Oyster table aerial view

Climavore: On Tidal Zones responds to the dead zones created by salmon farms in the Isle of Skye, Scotland, and beyond. Working with local stakeholders, from fish farmers to local residents, it aims to help transition away from salmon farming and develop alternative aquacultures by working with bivalves and seaweeds that clean the water by breathing. Photo courtesy Ars Electronica / flickr / CC-by-NC-ND 2.0.

03: Tree Mountain—A Living Time Capsule: 11,000 Trees, 11,000 People, 400 Years

A snowy mountain lined with younge coniferous trees is centered in the photo in front of a grey cloudy sky.

Tree Mountain in winter 2013. Photo by Strata Suomi / Wikimedia Commons / CC-by-2.0.

By Agnes Denes

Ylöjärvi, Finland  

1992–1996

Tree Mountain, an elliptical man-made mountain in Ylöjärvi, Finland, measuring 420 meters long, 270 meters wide, and 38 meters high, is a momentous effort to tackle ecological crises. Made by artist Agnes Denes, the mountain is covered by more than 11,000 trees, planted by 11,000 people from all over the world. The trees were planted in a swirling geometric pattern that pays homage to the golden section and the patterns of the Fibonacci sequence seen in pineapples and sunflowers.

The project is a testament to the possibility of collective care and responsibility in collaboration with nature for Earth’s welfare, and is now a living, breathing forest and collective monument. The Finnish government has committed to protect the land for 400 years. While the citizens of Finland care for the trees, ownership of Tree Mountain remains with humanity, and it is not to be sold or transferred.

Agnes Denes is a pioneering environmental artist who has worked at the intersection of land art, ecofeminism, mathematics, and philosophy for over 50 years.

A design of objects plottot to circle around top of a hill sits above a photo of a hill with younge trees lining it, just as the illustration depicts.

Tree Mountain, winter 2007. Photo by Amy Youngs / flickr / CC-by-NC-SA 2.0.

A hill scattered with younge coniferous trees in front of a blue somewhat cloudy sky.

Tree Mountain, summer 2007. Photo by Amy Youngs / flickr / CC-by-NC-SA 2.0.

A hill covered in green, lush, coniferous trees in front of a blue somewhat cloudy sky.

Tree Mountain, summer 2013. Photo by Strata Suomi / Wikimedia Commons / CC by 2.0.

A path lined with tall trees leads to a lush green field on trees with a small hill.

Tree Mountain, summer 2013. Photo by Strata Suomi / Wikimedia Commons / CC-by-2.0.

04: Lead to Life

A Black woman holds up a rifle in the air with both hands and faces signs that say "love" and plants arranged against the posters.

At a 2019 Lead to Life alchemy ceremony at the Life is Living Festival in Oakland, California (Ohlone territory), ritualist Adorable Earth Angel holds up a rifle that would later be transformed into a tool, in collaboration with Anti-Police Terror Project (APTP). Photos by Ayse Gursoz, courtesy Lead to Life.

Various public alchemy ceremonies

Atlanta, Georgia, and Oakland, California, US 

2016–present

Lead to Life is an Atlanta- and Oakland-based collective led by Black and queer artists, healers, and ecologists who convene public gatherings, ceremonies, and workshops to address the pain and trauma caused by gun violence. They bridge racial and environmental justice through ceremony and art practice, exploring a commitment to “decomposing systems of oppression.” The collective transforms guns into shovels, which are then used for public gatherings and ceremonial tree plantings at sites where people have been affected by violence.

Since 2016, the collective has used what they call “applied alchemy” in creating public guns-to-shovels ceremonies. Sometimes attended by hundreds of people, these ceremonies invite families impacted by violence to place gun metal into a forge, where it will then be reshaped by a metalsmith into triangular handles and attached to shovels. Each handle is inscribed with the prayer: “As we decompose violence, may the earth again be free.” The shovels are then used to plant trees at locations across the cities in which they work, from historic churches to sites impacted by violence, sometimes incorporating soil collected from lynching sites.

According to cofounder brontë velez, the intention of Lead to Life is “to transform that which ends life into that which sustains life—to facilitate an alchemical healing process that can physically transform both our weapons and our imaginations.” By melting and fundamentally transforming something that causes death into a tool that helps create a new life, they aim to create space for Black communities most affected by gun violence to grieve and connect with the land, thereby receiving respite and together imagining and orienting toward a Black ecofeminist politic of liberation.

Editor’s note: Learn more about artists turning deadly weapons into tools for storytelling and social change in a related project by Pedro Reyes, Palas Por Pistolas, included in FORWARD Issue 3: Community Safety.

In black and white; three people stand on a platform. One raises a rifle in his hands, and one raises a hammer in his hands while looking at a crowd. There are anti-police bruality posters and messeges behind them.

At every ceremony, Lead to Life invites family members who have lost loved ones to gun violence to offer weapons to the flames in a community ceremony of transformative, applied alchemy. Cephus X. Johnson (Uncle Bobby X) is the uncle of Oscar Grant, a young Black man murdered by Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) Police in 2009. "Since we lost Oscar," says Lead to Life, "Uncle Bobby alchemized his grief by helping create a police citizen review board of BART, establishing the Oscar Grant Foundation, and launching a nationwide network to support other families affected by such violence."

Outside of a grandoise building, people wearing protective welding gear light something on fire on top of a podium-like structure.

Outside of a grandoise building, people wearing protective welding gear light something on fire on top of a podium-like structure which there are high flames and smoke coming off of.

“As we decompose violence, may the earth again be free.”

A person holds an firey hot metal object through welding gloves while another person hammers at it.

"Offerings are central to our ceremonial practice," says Lead to Life. At every ceremony, they invite the community to build an altar together with pictures of lost loved ones, candles, flowers, and offerings of nourishment for ancestors. "We pour libations. We offer the ritual of song, of drumming, of melody. We offer our joy. And finally, we offer the guns to honor all those who have been taken from us through violence. We give offerings to honor our ancestors, the long line of gentle stewards of the land, to our more-than-human kin, the Indigenous peoples whose land we occupy, and the warriors of love for their guidance, their prayers and cosmic companionship in this struggle for justice."

05: Black of Death

Black of Death, Above the Diet Building ⓒ2008 Chim↑Pom.

By Chim↑pom

Tokyo and Fukushima, Japan

2007, 2013

In Black of Death, a member of the Tokyo-based Chim↑Pom collective sits on the window ledge of a moving car, carrying a stuffed crow and a megaphone that’s playing recorded crow calls through symbolic locations in Tokyo and Fukushima. These calls and the moving stuffed bird attract huge flocks of crows that fly along, following the collective as it travels through traffic and the city toward these locations. The first intervention, in 2007, focused on Tokyo, leading crows to swarm over the Parliament and other significant public spaces. In 2013, Chim↑Pom performed Black of Death again, gathering crows that had proliferated while feeding on abandoned livestock in the nuclear exclusion zone in Fukushima, and shepherded them out of the zone.

These captivating, large-scale performances question how the nation deals with social injustice in the city as well as the devastating events in Fukushima. The presence of the crows, commonly seen as omens of doom or bad luck, creates an unsettling feeling of dread, resembling the historic plagues that wreaked havoc on European societies. With a satirical touch, Chim↑Pom offers a critique of Japanese society's response to natural disasters and its flawed reactions to crises.

06: Hunger, Inc.  

Nurvista worked with poor communities who were RASKIN rice beneficiaries to reconstruct a scene of a hostile crowd fighting for rice, a common sight on TV news. This reenactment, performed by a group of people who have struggled with this issue, brought it into a performative context and later allowed for reflection on how to create catharsis and a processing of this ongoing systemic injustice.

By Elia Nurvista

Yogyakarta, Indonesia

2015–present

Elia Nurvista is an artist based in Yogyakarta (Jogja) who works with food to ask: What can the materials and processes we use to nourish ourselves say about our histories, politics, and societies? Hunger, Inc. interrogates the mass distribution of rice in the government-subsidized RASKIN program for poor communities in Indonesia.

This multilayered project, which first emerged as part of the 2015 Jogja Biennale, ranges from public performances to a fine-dining experience offered by a professional chef named “Raskin Gourmet” using the low-quality RASKIN rice. Presented in tandem are video parodies of the marketing campaigns by nongovernmental organizations that sell poverty to raise funds, and a video reenacting news footage of people fighting for rice. Nurvista worked with poor communities who were RASKIN rice beneficiaries to reconstruct a scene of a hostile crowd fighting for rice, a common sight on TV news. This reenactment, performed by a group of people who have struggled with this issue, brought it into a performative context and later allowed for reflection on how to create catharsis and a processing of this ongoing systemic injustice.

Hunger, Inc., uses performative, collaborative, and discursive strategies to strengthen solidarity among people who live in a precarious condition and are facing food insecurity. Through activities linked to food sovereignty, in its many forms, this project shows how agricultural reforms and the ways in which our food is processed and distributed can infiltrate tiers of society and politics, from the commodification of charity to the fetishizing of human struggle.

What can the materials and processes we use to nourish ourselves say about our histories, politics, and societies?

A woman with a brown lob stands at a three-quarter angle from the camera. She is wearing an earthy-green jumpsuit while standing in front of green folliage with a dark shadow.

Amal Khalaf

Amal Khalaf is a curator and artist and currently Director of Programmes at Cubitt and Civic Curator at the Serpentine Galleries. Here and in other contexts she has developed residencies, exhibitions, and collaborative research projects at the intersection of art and social justice, recently launching Support Structures for Support Structures, a fellowship and grant programme for artists working in the field of community practice and spatial politics. With an interest in radical pedagogy, collectivity and community practice, she has been part of developing a migrant justice programme through Implicated Theatre (2011–2019) using Theatre of the Oppressed methodologies to create interventions, curricula and performances with ESOL teachers, hotel workers, domestic workers, and migrant justice organisers.

She is a founding member of artist collective GCC and is also a trustee for film cooperative not/nowhere (London), Art Night (UK), and Mophradat (Athens). Recent projects include Radio Ballads (2019–22), an exhibition and research project in London; and Sensing the Planet (2021), a gathering of musicians, artists, and climate activists in Dartington, Devon. In 2019 she curated Bahrain's pavilion for the Venice Biennale; in 2018 she co-curated an international arts and social justice conference in London called Rights to the City; and in 2016 she co-directed the 10th edition of the Art Dubai Global Art Forum.

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