U - n - f - o - l - d

U - n - f - o - l - d
A cultural response to climate change

Ackroyd & Harvey / Amy Balkin / David Buckland / Adriane Colburn / Sam Collins / Nick Edwards / Leslie Feist / Francesca Galeazzi / Nathan Gallagher / Marije de Haas / Robyn Hitchcock + KT Tunstall / Ian McEwan / Brenndan McGuire / Daro Montag / Michèle Noach / Lucy + Jorge Orta / Sunand Prasad / Tracey Rowledge / Lemn Sissay / Shiro Takatani / Clare Twomey / Chris Wainwright
Ausstellungseröffnung

Begrüßung: Gerald Bast, Rektor der Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien
18. Mai 2010, 19:00

Öffnungszeiten: täglich von 13:00 - 18:00
19. Mai 2010 - 6. Juni 2010

A cultural response to climate change
A project by Cape Farewell Camberwell, Chelsea, Wimbledon, University of the Arts London, Columbia College Chicago, University of Applied Arts Vienna
Curated by David Buckland and Chris Wainwright
www.capefarewell.com

Unfold
Unfold exhibits the work of twenty-five artists who have participated in the Cape Farewell expeditions in 2007 and 2008 to the High Arctic and in 2009 to the Andes. Each artist witnessed firsthand the dramatic and fragile environmental tipping points of climate change.
Their innovative, independent and collective responses explore the physical, emotional and political dimensions of our complex and changing world stressed by profligate human activity. This body of work addresses a new process of thinking where artists play an informed and significant role through creating a cultural shift, a challenge to evolve and inspire a symbiotic contract with our spiritual and physical world.

Cape Farewell Project
Cape Farewell galvanises the creative energies of artists, creative individuals and young people, encouraging them to engage with research and communicate their findings on climate change in order to work towards a sustainable future. Cape Farewell works internationally to develop innovative ideas and creative projects founded in scientific research, building a creative language that communicates on a human scale the urgency of the global climate challenge.
Artists associated with Cape Farewell include: visual artists Sophie Calle, Antony Gormley, Rachel Whiteread; writers Ian McEwan, Vikram Seth; choreographer Siobhan Davies; musicians Laurie Anderson, Jarvis Cocker, Feist, KT Tunstall; playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and comedian Marcus Brigstocke.
The way that we live our lives has caused the climate to change and the solution to a potentially devastating reality has become a cultural challenge. Cape Farewell asks the best of our creative minds to respond to this challenge and to build a vision for a sustainable future.

New Generation
New Generation is a groundbreaking initiative that could help reform society’s notions of what art education can be. It will question ideas of what it is to be an artist in a world of fast-evolving social and cultural change. During the three years of the programme, working in partnership with three of the UK’s premiere arts universities, we will involve three student groups in a series of activity-based programmes. Cape Farewell’s premise is that climate change will affect all communities globally. The way we have developed our lifestyles has created the problem and the solution is therefore a cultural responsibility. New Generation will establish the idea that cultural responsibility has a place at the heart of artistic practice, it offers an exciting development opportunity for emerging artists and could provide a future model for arts-based education across the UK and internationally.

The Book
It is clear that the consequences of climate change are real and very serious. But what is the true cause of this global change? It is not science that has caused the overheating planet but the way we have evolved our life-styles and values over the past 200 years. The excesses of our human activity coupled with our dependence on fossil fuels, which drive our economies, is clearly not sustainable. We have become addicted to carbon to fuel our lifestyle and like all addictions, withdrawal will be physically, intellectually and emotionally challenging. Over hundreds of millennia, the Earth’s natural systems have been carefully sequestrating excess CO2 deep underground in the form of oil, coal, gas and frozen methane. Human expansion and wealth over the past 200 years has been.