DEAR CLIMATE

(U CHAUDHURI, F ERTL, O KELLHAMMER, M ZURKOW)

American collective, 2014–ongoing

General Assembly, 2018

Circle of printed nylon banners on wood poles
12 ft. (365.8 cm) high, 84 ft. (25.6 m) diam.;
each flag 60 x 36 in. (152.4 x 91.4 cm)
Courtesy the artists

The collective Dear Climate aims to guide audiences through a three-part process: meeting the climate, befriending the climate, and becoming the climate. In so doing, they hope to work “against notions of human separateness, human exceptionalism, and human centrality.” The group chose to create a rhythmic and ceremonial procession of flags, reminiscent of those at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, and place it around Storm King’s tram circle. The collective has said, “We imagine a multi-species ‘United Nations,’ with a seat for each member of the our planet’s ecosystem–animals, plants, geophysical forces.” Climate solutions will arise, the group believes, when humans acknowledge that they are no more than “earthlings along with all of the other species.” Dear Climate envisions these twenty flags as enacting a call and response: the black flags posit current problems, and the white flags respond with creative solutions.