CCCC Valencia
On April 21, 2022, the EU Climate Pact Ambassadors Juan Medina, José Segarra, Carmen Marqués and Barbara Bartels-Leipold visited the Emergency on Planet Earth exhibition at the Center del Carme Cultura Contemporània in Valencia
Until September 4, 2022, 14 Spanish and international artists will present the main problems of climate change in 12 rooms, based on the 12 tasks of Hercules.
SPACE DEBRIS
DEIH
Piel orbital
space junk. It’s great to dream; fascinating to develop. Everything is possible.
Our species does not develop new limbs or internal organs. We develop technology. We grow and evolve every time the future meets us.
In doing so, like a snake as it grows, we shed their skins, leaving behind a layered history of progress: layers of evolution circling the earth. Our old skin, a new skin for the planet made of plastic, metal, radio waves and useless history. Perhaps red-hot scrap falling at great speed.
There will come a day when we will have to go through this new orbital skin to advance further into space. It’s time to learn how to transform in other ways to keep dreaming.
GLOBAL WARMING
ONUR
Global warming. The world seems to be out of joint. Frozen water, melting icebergs, dried up lakes and forest fires. This seems like a bleak future utopia, but in reality it is happening every day somewhere on this planet. You see the big picture and forget the impact on the little things that directly affect us and keep us alive.
“If the bees disappear, man has only four years to live; no more bees, no more plants, no more animals, no more people,” Albert Einstein once said.
Photo: CCCC
These little heroes are a very important part of our ecosystem, which humans have been influencing with increasing industrialization since the 19th century at the latest through the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, thus endangering our lives and theirs.
CLIMATE CHANGE
LI HILL
Landscape in Red
climate change. The only sensible thing to do in these devastated times is to revolt, because we are not living in the age of anthropos, we are in the age of capital, and that is pushing this planet and everything to the brink of devastation. Through these bleached branches and flaring floors, a glimpse of the damaged world is revealed. The climate that has sustained life for thousands of years is changing at a devastating rate, leaving little room for survival for most of Earth’s inhabitants. This change is not felt evenly, the impact is not universal, and from this privileged position here in this museum, this piece should not treat people as one great, unified force with no differences and equal impact. Life on this planet is due to an unimaginably vast, interconnected network of organisms, climate and earth, a network in which the human species is enmeshed and bound.
This mock forest made from industrial waste invites you to step into a larger world for a moment, a world with little hidden stories in the ground, a world that is endangered but connected. In the words of Donna Haraway, we must learn to be comfortable with all the webs of life on this planet, we must learn to live and die well together. Immersed in this network, imagine the act of becoming entangled.
LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY
BARBITURIKILLS & WILL COLES
El beso de la muerte
loss of biodiversity. The main motivation of capitalism is profit. If a person, animal or object is not profitable, it has no value. Most animals are only profitable if they are killed for their ivory, fur, skin, or meat. Every year, billions of land animals are slaughtered just for food.
This track represents the “end of the days of capitalism” when corporations will have squeezed the last drop of life from all of the world’s resources. An unsustainable lifestyle is unsustainable. We have to change our way of life.
The nature of these tombstones shows how the corporations would deal with this issue. A mass-produced response devoid of empathy, the feigned familiarity of mall staff forced to wear a “Hello: My name is” sticker on their chest. Barbiturikills compensates for this by drawing the personalities of the endangered creatures struggling to survive around the world.
Overpopulation. The world population has tripled in the last 60 years. In 1950 we were 2,500 million people, today there are over 7,500 million. Some studies indicate that by the year 2100 we will be more than 11,000 million people.
Agricultural culture, advances in medicine and biotechnology, and other factors have lifted humans out of natural dynamics and turned them into an “invincible” species with an exponential growth unprecedented on our planet.
Overpopulation is the growth of a species beyond the sustainable limits of its habitat, creating an imbalance. The effects of this phenomenon are a depletion of limited resources.
In 2007, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries warned that this phenomenon is the root cause of many of the ecological and social threats of our time. The regulation of this phenomenon and the possible strategies to deal with it are currently not on the governments’ agenda as they are unpopular and complicated. In this sense, education, women’s empowerment and international coordination of family planning policies appear to be the most effective methods of controlling the phenomenon.
OVERPOPULATION
MARINA CAPDEVILA
FOSSIL FUELS
RESKATE
energy
Fossil fuels. The increasing consumption of energy around the world and the massive use of fossil fuels for its commercialization have shown that these resources are not sustainable as they are finite and are detrimental to the development of life on planet earth. Surviving the world as we know it will require greater use of renewable energy and increased energy efficiency coupled with lifestyle changes.
Reskate uses the tools of classic advertising, but unlike them, it proclaims a message in favor of the common good. This brochure aims to highlight the importance of the sun, which transmits the energy from which most renewable energies are derived.
DEFORASTATION
DOA OA
Does the forest make a noise when it falls if I am only there to listen to one of the falling trees?
The deforestation. For years the group of unified selves, humanity, has been too busy living their own lives to realize that almost everything that makes their progress possible is the result of the transformation of parts of the world in which they live live and in which other beings of different species and kingdoms also live. This process can happen in many different ways, but in any case, the shape in which the forest disappears fits perfectly with the shape of our consumption habits. Almost everything we make, use and throw away directly or indirectly bears some of the no longer existing forest cover.
What should we do?
The wild forest, that diverse ecosystem that contributes so much and in contrast has always been treated as raw material or plundered to civilize the land, patiently awaits our response.
WASTE
BIANCOSHOCK
Happy meal XXL
Waste. Garbage cans are a clear indicator of our eating habits. It is enough to simply open the lid and take a look inside to analyze what we are consuming. So-called junk food has been widespread in practically all parts of the world for decades. Its lack of nutrients is replaced by a large amount of calories, creating an excess of energy, much more than we can burn. This excess can cause cardiovascular problems and obesity.
If we focus on waste bins, we see that a significant part of the population does not recycle. Garbage that isn’t disposed of properly can pollute the soil and water we rely on so much.
POLLUTION
XELON & LIDIA CAO
The kiss of death
Pollution. There are kisses that are not forgotten and mean a lot, sometimes everything.
This kiss is actually a big lie, one that we tell ourselves because we know that we are going to embrace our greatest enemy, open our hearts to him without reservation and let him penetrate us to the core, so as not to even think about what really matters. We are in information overload, we know everything about climate change and pollution, we know what is happening, what needs to be done and what needs to be changed, we know what will happen if we don’t do something now and that we’ve already crossed a lot of really frightening boundaries.
And yet we choose to close our eyes and think that someone else will take responsibility for us, and so we give that kiss one more time as we let ourselves go without looking forward to acknowledging the immediate present live without thinking that there is no tomorrow if we open our eyes again…
It’s not too late, not everything is irreversible, we can now open our eyes and actively participate in the change, this decision is up to you, because if not, it could be yours and humanity’s last kiss…
SOIL DEGRADATION
NAYRA LOPEZ & VINZ FEEL FREE
soil deterioration. The fertility of our soil is vital for agriculture. For decades we have polluted the soil with artificial substances. Toxic waste, the use of pesticides and chemical insecticides, the accumulation of waste in illegal landfills or radioactive leaks neutralize the sustainability of soils for agriculture.
At this rate, we will see a future where the foods we grow do more harm than good to our bodies. Healthy soils and healthy groundwater are of the utmost importance for human survival.
MARINE DEBRIS
NAYRA LÓPEZ – VINZ
karma
marine debris. A huge amount of used items accumulates in all our oceans. Most of them are plastics. Plastics do not biodegrade like other wastes do.
These items cause the death of sea creatures. Those that breathe air drown because they become entangled, many mistakenly consume plastic because it resembles their prey, and all face the risk of strangulation. Large objects can clog the digestive tract, and the small objects are so rare that they outnumber living animals, so they enter the food chain and reach all levels of sea life.
The impact of man-made marine debris on the marine environment comes back to us in the form of karma when we eat species of animals caught in the sea. Regardless of the ecosystem destruction and species extinction in the Great Pacific Garbage Sheet, which is larger than Peru, we can narcissistically ask ourselves one question: what does this mean for me?
WATER MANAGEMENT
SPENCER TUNICK & VINZ FEEL FREE
Eden
water management. we are animals We need water for our survival. The impact of civilization on the environment has, among other things, made the water in the urban environment toxic.
With nudity as a symbol of freedom, our hybrid bird-headed figures have infused both scenarios. Eden, a natural territory unmodified by man since creation, is a pristine ecosystem where flora and fauna coexist in harmony thanks to the clean, pure and drinkable waters of a river in constant motion. The city, a human invention, is an almost sluggish river surrounded by buildings, vehicles, and polluted sewage, the waters of which are not only undrinkable but threatening every form of life.
Impression from the courtyard
‘Dulk. Processes Natural´
Fallero Artist Alejandro Santaeulalia and Urban Artist Antonio Segura (Dulk)
Until May 8, 2022, this installation could be seen in the courtyard in the context of the Fallas. The central monument, 22 meters high, was titled “Protect what you love” after a slogan by oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who was the first to declare a planetary SOS on climate change.
The protagonist of the memorial was a large polar bear that is melting like a candle in the face of global warming. The bear carries human irresponsibility and its impact on nature as a burden on its back. At the base, the extinct animals are just a memory. And the ice is also melting rapidly, causing the bears to separate. They roam the streets of Valencia and some have taken refuge in the Renaissance Convent of the Center del Carmen.
In front of the entrance…
Related art also on the street in front of the CCCC. The wall opposite the entrance shows two tiles: the water level of the 1957 flood and the estimated water level in 2100.
Texts for the exhibition Emergency on Planet Earth: CCCC