Ship of Fools: Artists and Climate Change

 From the Last Words by Heather O’Neill and  Jean-Paul Kelly

Pattison Onestop and Cape Farewell Foundation co-present Ship of Fools: Artists and Climate Change, a multi-site urban screens project throughout Toronto addressing the reality of the climate challenge through a cultural lens, from November 5th to 18th, 2012.

Responding to Cape Farewell Foundation’s mandate to instigate a cultural response to climate change, Ship of Fools: Artists and Climate Change utilizes Pattison’s advertising screens, and draws on the creativity of a range of artists to communicate on a metropolitan scale.

Vanishing Glaciers, four stunning time-lapse videos by internationally acclaimed outdoor photographer James Balog, capture over 5 years of astonishing changes, dramatically documenting the ice melt of glaciers in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and arctic sea ice Norway. Vanishing Glaciers plays every 10 minutes on Pattison Onestop’s network of subway platform screens across Toronto, bringing this powerful and vitally important work to over one million daily commuters.

“Ice matters. It’s the place where we can see and hear and feel climate change in action. When ice melts, everyone – regardless of age or ideological persuasion – can understand what it means,” states acclaimed photographer, James Balog.

Award-winning Canadian novelist, Heather O’Neill (Lullabies for Little Criminals) and multi-medium artist, Jean-Paul Kelly have collaborated to produce Last Words, a site-specific allegorical work for Pattison Outdoor billboards located at the entrance to buildings in Toronto’s financial district – Yonge/Adelaide and Yonge/Richmond.

Stressing the urgency and need for global climate care, pithy reminders written by Juno award-winning Canadian hip-hop star, Shad, are presented on the strategically located west-end Pattison Outdoor digital billboard along the Gardiner Expressway at Kipling Ave.

“This urban screens program is pioneering and Cape Farewell is excited to work with the Canadian writer Heather O’Neill and poet Shad to vision the new, through the art-form of short digital imaginings. In addition, James Balog’s awesome glacial time lapses shockingly state the speed of the impact of climate change on our frozen north,” says David Buckland, Cape Farewell founder and International Director.

“It is rare that I have the opportunity to be part of such an important project, one which increases our environmental literacy, and helps escalate the necessity of rethinking our future. I am very pleased to bring these powerful works to the Pattison screens,” said Sharon Switzer, Arts Programmer and Curator, Pattison Onestop.