LIGHT BULBS ARE NOT THE ISSUE

The below text was published as a full-page ad in the February 2010 issue of ARTFORUM magazine, as well as in the March edition of FRIEZE...


LIGHT BULBS ARE NOT THE ISSUE

In December 2009, the UN Climate Change Conference brought together the worlds most powerful industrial and political representatives.

Taking place in the small city of Copenhagen, it meant that all hotels were quickly booked by official entities, leaving civil society with no place to stay.

To solve this major logistical problem, we developed NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN - a project which asked private families to open their homes to guests.

Our initiative succeeded in providing free accommodation for over 3,000 activists during the conference.

Beyond simply securing housing NEW LIFE COPENHAGEN exists as a social sculpture. Viewing the climate crisis as a real threat, but also as a positive opportunity to create radical re-thinkings of a destructive capitalist system.

With this in mind, we invited artists to provide form and content to the interactions of more than 6,000 activists and host families.

Not through physical works of art, but via social experiments engaging our participants to investigate new ways of living together.

The Copenhagen Conference ended, unsurprisingly, without any binding global climate treaty. Expectations are now high for this years conference in Mexico and the NEW LIFE community has already begun to mobilize for the coming negotiations in Cancun.

While mainstrean climate discourse seeks to place responsibility on the individual, any real change can only come from civil society pressure ensuring large-scale governmental and corporate reform. NEW LIFE participants from over 100 nations stayed together in Copenhagen in the search for sustainable perspectives, ready to experiment with collectivity, fighting for a new way of life.

We believe this is possible. And we will be there in Mexico.

WWW.WOOLOO.ORG/NEWLIFE



(Since the text was published, the Mexican government changed the meeting location from Mexico City to Cancún. This has been corrected in the above.)