Jacob Hartmann from Copenhagen's Municipality and Sharing Copenhagen, held the opening speech for the exhibition. Mr. Hartmann has been a great supporter of CO2 Green Drive throughout the years and have worked with us on several projects and climate awareness events.
There was also a lovely video installation by Kristina Stoltz, that she has done in collaboration with her artist group POLAK. They are currently crowdfounding for their next project, you can go and support them HERE. Parts of the above video was shown in the exhibition.
It was great to see the by Cotter lasercut 3D CO2 painting sculpture again, that was last hung on Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen. It has found a new home in Rebild and seems very happy in its new place.
See more about how it was made HERE
In Rebild, we found some trees that was perfectly aligned, and was perfect to hang the sculpture on.
We first started by gathering the 16 pieces as a puzzle on the ground. According to the producer of the paint called KNOxOUT used for the sculpure, each square meter painted with this paint (that has nano technology in it), breaks down NOx in the same way one grown tree does. In other words, by hanging the sculpture on this spot, it was like installing 16 full grown trees. Not that the air quality in Rebild was anywhere as filled with NOx as where it was hung in Copenhagen.
Then piece by piece, we put the sculpture together on a frame attached to the trees.
All done! Thanks again to the Rebild handymen crew for their help! Not to forget Will Gurley who helped design the drawings for the artwork, Christian Riis from Grounded Craftwork who helped build it and of course Lasse Bentzen who assisted in the the production back in 2014.
The CO2 3D sculpture was hung close to the entrace of the cave, also on the premises.
Once inside, it is like an underground cathedral filled with art.
The caves was previously owned by the old school Danish sculptor Anders Bundgaard, who used the cave to store the casts for his sculptures. He is most know for the wonderful sculpture in Copenhagen called Gefion. In the above image, one of the molds from the sculpture can be seen, a Bul/Ox/Bison.
You can see the Bull to the far right in the above image of the Gefion sculpture in Copenhagen, close to the Little Mermaid Sculpture.
The whole concept of the CO2 Green Drive Project is inspired by the Bison Cave Painting Theory. The theory is based on the fact that there are very often found Bison cave painitng all around Europe. Why the Bison? Well, the Bison was one of the smaller animals at the time, had alot of meat on its body, and skin and warm wool that could be used by the humans. It was still however very dangerous to confront a Bison with wooden spears, stones and bare hands.
It took generations of cave people to figure out the best way to overome this great challange, in collaboration.This is why the Shaman in the group would paint the groups biggest challange on their cave wall. This so they could touch it, talk to it, throw stones and spears at it, vizualizing their challenge to be able to overcome it outside the cave, in reality. This was the intuitive idea for the early artists. To paint the challanges that they needed to overcome, on the wall. Makes sense to me!
One of the best ways they figured out how to kill the Bison, was to trick it to run after them. When they were about to run out over the cliff, they would grab on to a rope so they would not fall down. This while the Bison would run out over the cliff, to its death down below.
To honor the original artists who painted Bisons in caves all over Europe, we decided to recreate a Bison painting in the Rebild cave. When walking around in the cave on the reserach trip, previous to the exhibition, this wall popped out asking to be used for a painting of a Bision.
This was the visualization of how it could look.
In collaboration with the local artist and art teacher Christina Siggaard and her 7 art students from Rebild School of Culture's Art Department, the above Bison painting was created. It was wonderful to see another cave painting of a Bison live, being able to touch it with my hands.
At another area in the cave, 50 of Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen's "Little Sun's" were installed. They run on solar power, and are exchanged everyday of the exhibition, with 50 ones, that has been charged by the sun outside the cave. The sculpture that can be seen in the middle of the above image, is by Anders Bundgaard and is called "The Snow is Melting". A nice connection to Mr. Eliasson's Ice Melting sculptures, he have installed in both Copenhagen and in Paris in connection to COP21.
The main inspiration for the performance concept of CO2 Green Drive, has been taken from The Bison Cave Painting Theory. It is based on the following train of thoughts in 2008: If the intuition of humans is to paint their greatest challenges on their cave walls, to visualize overcomming the thier challenges (The Bison) together, outside of the cave; Then how can this be recreated in connection to the Climate Conference COP15, that was going to take place in Copenhagen, in the late fall of 2009?
A conference where the worlds most powerful people was meeting in a group under the same roof (The Cave), to figure out how they in collaboration should stop the the biggest threat humanity has ever been confronted with: The Climate Crisis. A crisis that to a large extent is caused by CO2 in our athmosphere, creating the "Green House Gas Effect", heating up mother earth and melting the Poles. In above image you can see the projection of the CO2 painting performance taking place LIVE, on a huge globe on Rådhuspladen (the Times Square of Copenhagen).
These thoughts led up to the idea to paint our current biggest challenge on the Virtual Cave Wall of Copenhagen. The thought that Copenhagen during COP15 was going to be the cave wall for the whole worlds attention and media, who had their focus on the city during those historic days. Days when the worlds leaders was gathered and were supposed to make the right decisions for the future of the population of our planet. The above image is the webinterface where all the vehicles could be seen LIVE as little dots, while driving the CO2 shaped route in the streets of the city.
The concept developed, was to virtually paint our times Bison - the CO2 symbol, over Copenhagen with the help of the very technology and ways that could be of great help to reduce the climate crisis. This in the form of Fossil Free vehicles, GPS Satellite technology and climate aware humans in a coordinated collaborative, interactive performance. See more about the actual performance HERE
The 3D CO2 Painting Sculpture, was created in 2014 as an art piece. It is based on the virtual painting created by the 100 fossil free vehicles as "brushes" and the GPS technology as "paint" in connection to COP15 in 2009. In the above image, I feel the piece works the best. In the dark with the CO2 symbol lit up by LED lights, looking alot like a neon Hotel sign in the streets of New York.
Another part of the exhibition, was the 7 year time line of The CO2 Green Drive Project.
It was created on a 8 meter long wall, with a Neon Green sprayed line.
It took about 6 hours (00:00 - 06:00) to complete the collage that cronologically documents The CO2 Green Drive Project, from 2008 to 2015. It was a mindblowing experience to re-live 7 years in images, flyers, notes, stickers, posters, maps and random memoribilia. Made me think of a book!
The natural progression of the CO2 Green Drive has lead to political and climate activism, that in turn has lead to the current role as a political candidate in the new Danish Green Political Party: The Alternative
The final version of time-line, with a man in green.
A little video of the Time-Line - with the tune "Horizons" by LTJ Bukem.
Image to the left from the Roskilde 2010 version of the project, and to the right a original Lithograph of the Roskilde CO2 route, colored in by Sasha Estella Fuglsang Mikkelsen.
Another sculpture outside was of a Penguin in ice, by Søren Lyngbye. Out in the water, he had also placed a mobile Frog sculpture, energized by solarpanels when riding its bike.
To see more about the exhibition, go to the Rebild Centers site HERE
Finally, thanks Jens Galshiøt (above) for the ride to Odense on my way back from Rebild after the opening, and for a tour of the workshop and gallery. Looking forward to the collaboration in New York on April 17th!
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