CO2 E - RACE EXHIBITION AT EXIT ART IN NEW YORK

AUTOTOPIA: Cars for a Better Tomorrow

April 8 - 30, 2011

Special Reception and CO2-Friendly Car Showcase on Sat., April 23 / 12-6pm

In celebration of Earth Day on April 22, Exit Art is pleased to announce a celebration of CO2-friendly cars through an exhibition that documents its erratic history and an CO2-friendly car showcase. AUTOTOPIA: CARS FOR A BETTER TOMORROW, a project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics), focuses on the history of the electric car in connection with political and environmental factors that have revolutionized the methods and technologies of transit.

The first electric car (above), made over 100 years ago, was invented soon after the combustion engine vehicle (the kind of engines we use today) was developed as a new way of powering automobiles. Today, electric cars must be seen as serious alternatives to the gasoline powered-vehicles that are depleting fossil fuel supplies, polluting the environment, and exacerbating our dependence on foreign oil.

Cars are now being designed to enhance our lives – through the integration of digital communication systems – and improve our future, by providing a solution to our energy crisis.  Wireless Internet allows vehicles to connect and share data on traffic patterns, intelligently coordinating movements and keeping drivers connected to social networks. The reinvention of the automobile, and the infrastructures that make it possible, will not be easy – but it will be essential.

This exhibition coincides with Earth Day, and is organized concurrently with the CO2 E-Race, the culminating event of New York City’s Earth Day celebration. Initiated in 2008, the CO2 E-Race (A Race for Climate Awareness) increases public awareness of global climate changes using CO2-friendly vehicles as a way to spread the message. The New York E-Race is a parade of CO2-friendly cars through the streets of Manhattan; connected to GPS devices, their route can be tracked online and on the Toshiba jumbo screen in Times Square. The “E” shape formed by the parade draws attention to Earth Day and CO2-friendly cars as the future of transportation, encouraging the public to “erase” climate change. 

Organized by Herb Tam, Associate Curator, and Lauren Rosati, Assistant Curator.

ELECTRIC CAR SHOWCASE - ONE DAY ONLY!

Saturday, April 23, 2011 / 12-6pm

Following the CO2 E- Race, Exit Art will exhibit several participating CO2-friendly cars in a showcase format. Tesla Motors will be showing an electric, zero-emissions Orange Roadster, which gets 245 miles per charge and goes from 0 to 60mph in 3.7 seconds. A converted Electric DeLorean (above) will also be on view, along with a Biofueled (E85) driven Ford Fusion FFV from the Danish company Novozymes.

2pm: Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen, the organizer and artist behind the CO2 E-Race, will give a brief talk about the origins of the project and the environmental issues it seeks to address.

ABOUT SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics)

SEA is a diverse multimedia exhibition program that addresses social and environmental concerns. It assembles artists, activists, scientists and scholars through presentations of visual art, performances, panels and lecture series that communicate international activities concerning environmental and social activism. It provides a vehicle through which the public can be made aware of socially- and environmentally-engaged work, and a forum for collaboration among artists, scientists, activists, scholars and the public. SEA functions as an initiative where individuals can join together in dialogue about issues that affect our daily lives. Conceived by Exit Art Co-Founder / Artistic Director Papo Colo.

Exit Art

475 Tenth Ave

New York, NY 10018

www.exitart.org

PARMA PLANS

The next version of the project will take place in Parma’s city centre and will be a core part of the first edition of the VE Show – an international convention focused on electric vehicles and sustainable mobility, which will be held at Parma’s Exhibition Centre on March 26th 2011. It will be produced in collaboration with Ragnarock Association, who produced the Milan version in November 2010 and June 2009.
For more information click HERE

Bjørn Lomborg & Tony Juniper on EV's

Jacob Fuglsang Mikkelsen talks about electric cars and such with
British environmentalist Tony Juniper (special adviser for The Prince of Wales' Rain forest Project and University of Cambridge, long-time CEO of Friends of Earth, has lead campaigns for The Green Party, etc.) and the Danish author and professor Bjørn Lomborg "The Sceptical Environmentalist", Copenhagen Consensus.

Filmed for the German/French TV channel ARTE

THE MILAN VERSION PART 2 - NOVEMBER 2010

The Milan CO2 tag - click on image to see larger size

The Milan flyer & poster

Videos about the day


By the Milan based production company Lunadavideo



Video by the Italian website LIFEGATE
The video is showing the pre-event before the cars went out on the "painting peformance" in the streets of Milan.



The above video with focus on a vehicle alternative to a scooter in Italy,
that can be driven from the age of 16.

The Milan version was done in collaboration with Ragnarock - Nordic Festival.
For more images, go to their Facebook page on HERE!

REVENGE OF THE ELECTRIC CAR - TRAILER

Chris Paine in Denmark on a Electric Nimbus, July 2010

VILNIUS CO2 GREEN DRIVE - LITUANIAN TV

The event was documented by several National TV Stations.

Lovely Film about Changing Something

(and yes, it is advertising, but the message is ok)

The above image is also about Changing Something from a project anno 1994 in San Francisco

THE VILNIUS VERSION - 23rd OF OCTOBER 2010

Video by OVAL - Not Round

The Tesla - Vilnius CO2 Green Drive

Words from the Cat Walk

Talking about the Electric Cable buses that rolls in the streets of Vilnius

The Electric Roller Blade Mobile and a home made Electric Scooter

The Tesla going up on the Cat Walk

Church in Sun

The Electric Pobeda - more about Pobeda HERE

The Bikes, Electric Bikes, Electric Motorcycles and Electric Scooters

The Vilnius Dome and Clock Tower

The Police Escort

The CO2 painting done with the cars and the GPS modules

Christian Marcus from Tesla ready to drive the Drag Race against a gasoline muscle  car

More about Vilnius Green Drive, go to the site HERE
Also see the Facebook page HERE

Words on Electric Cars - A Wind/Wind Situation

Video made by New York Director Shaky Jones.
More from Shaky Jones HERE

Video from Roskilde by The American Embassy in Copenhagen

More video's from The Us Embassy Copenhagen Channel HERE

WE WILL DO VILNIUS

The Project will happen in Vilnius on the 23rd of October 2010 in collaboration with Nordic Council of Ministers and the local Creative Collective OVAL.

The above is the first sketch of the Vilnius tag done in connection with the "Sea of Creativity" conference in Vilnius in the spring of 2010 where the project was first presented.

The above is the main square in Vilnius that we hope we can use.

Allan van O.T. Andersen--who you can see in the above images from the Riga version
where Allan was in the car with the Danish Director Simon Drewsen Holmberg of
the Danish Cultural Institute in Riga--is the Creative Director of OVAL and also happens to be Danish.



The above is the other main square by the City Town Hall, where our friends  from OVAL produced a 3D projection short film called "When Fairy Tales come True".

More about Vilnius HERE

ISLAND THINKING

The small island called Ærø (Aeroe), with a flag very similar to the Rastafari flag and the world's largest Solar Panel Plant along with a bunch of windmills all over the island, is expanding its green profile.

The latest great news from Ærø is their new little armada of Electric Cars. Since the Island is rather small, one never needs to run out of energy as there are chargers installed in strategic places.

The cars can be rented from the local tourist agency during the summer when the island is packed with tourists that flock the almost too good to be true romantic and lovely little Danish Micro Cosmos of classic Danishness and cozyness. The rest of the year the cars are used by the municipality for hospice services around the island. One could say that we all live on an island. The island we move around on a daily basis; Home, work, shopping, school and close friends. Most of these places are withing a "island radius" and it it is really here the electric car is perfect. If they all can just be charged by windmills on that island...

Ærø also has one of the most colorful Ferrys seen by mankind, painted by the Danish artist duo "Randi and Katrine". Life on Ærø revolves around the ferry; who is on it, who just came to the island, who is leaving, what happened on the ferry, if the ferry was on time and why the ferry sailing from Ærøskøbing (above) should be the main ferry for the whole island, and not the other ones from the other two villages (Marstal and Søby) on the island. This discussion has been ongoing for decades and was just ended by having two ferries going from Ærøskøbing to Svendborg, the new ferry being the old ferry from Marstal. From now on, hopefully the main discussions among the people of Ærø will be about how lovely the newly painted is and if they were ever to get a new ferry, it had to be electric running of the island's windmills or nothing else.

Siemens has come up with the world’s first all-electric car ferry to be delivered to Norway, which can transport 120 cars along with 360 passengers while sailing entirely on electric motors. The 80-meter vessel, dubbed ZeroCat 120, will be delivered with onboard batteries. Plans are being made on Ærø to bring a similar Electric Ferry to Ærø in the near future.

The electric ferry includes a battery weighing 10 metric tons, but overall the weight of the ferry is just half of the ferry of conventional design. One of the best features of the ferry is that it it can be recharged in just 10 minutes in the breaks between crossings. This feature was integrated in Norway because the local grid is not equipped to deliver such a large amount of power in a short duration. Therefore batteries have been installed at each port, which deliver power at a fast pace to the onboard batteries and then recharge themselves slowly from the local grid. On Ærø, where there is both plenty of Solar Power and Windmills, most likely the Electric Ferry will be charged by the power generated on the Island.

The above image was taken on Ærø in 2008 and was used for viral images for CO2 E - Race in the early stages of the project

More about Ærø HERE
Another set of photos and story about Ærø HERE

THE ROSKILDE VERSION ON JULY 4TH 2010

Many wonderful things came together on July 4th when the project was produced in the city of Roskilde and at the Roskilde Festival.


Video by Andreas Brandrup Elkjær

The above CO2 painting over Roskilde was made by the 7 year old Sasha Estella Fuglsang Mikkelsen and a follow-up event for children will take place again in Roskilde in connection with the installation of the permanent LED Light route through the city.

The White Tesla from Vind Energy and the White Melex from Svenningsen's on display at the morning Electric Car Exhibition on the main square of Roskilde City, with the Roskilde Cathedral in the background where Danish King's and Queens have been buried for centuries.

 

There was also a small exhibition of the cars and a scooter in front of the Roskilde Municipality Building. The second car in line after the red Citroen was a solar powered car from Ben & Jerry's.

Captian Hope held his now classic Ode to Ra or "The Sunny Happy People Speech"

Mr. Green and his Climate Clowns and Crew performed for the Roskilde children at the nearby Public Library, on the Square and all over the Roskilde Festival.

Mr. Green was also in charge of the PAINT in the form of color coded GPS devices to be installed in all the vehicles part of the painting performance.

The Cars (The Brushes) performing the painting performance through the streets of Roskilde.

Singing the Energy Song inside of the ARRIVA Electric bus on the route.

The Electric Scooters and Electric Motor Cykles driving behind the bus.

The Roskilde Festival Th!nk City Car driving in front of the caravan on it's way into the Festival Area with the Twin Towers in the back ground.

The Melex with a Mr. Green on the back and the Segway entering the Roskilde Festival area.

Chris Paine (Director of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car") interviewing Esben Danielsen from Roskilde Festival for his short film to be screened at COP16 in Cancun.

The Danish Climate Minister Lykke Friis came by and got a green nose by Mr. Green and declared: "CANCUN CAN!"

Along with driving the Green Electric Scooter with a smile!

The CO2 E - Race Roskilde Crew was happy in the end of the day and later went to go and see the artist currently known as:

..Prince, and he was Funky!