Call for Participation in a public art project and installation at Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix, AZ
TOWARD 2050, a public engagement artwork, will culminate in an immersive labyrinth installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, Arizona - January through May of 2025. This project is orchestrated by AZ-based artist, Ann Morton who was the creator of the Violet Protest; in partnership with Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ.
The Garden’s ongoing commitment to advance excellence in education, research, exhibition and conservation, makes it the optimal location to present this artistic, social action that focuses on the urgency of how we must take part in caring for our planet's health. As visitors experience this labyrinth that YOU can help bring to fruition, they will step year-by-year, ever closer to 2050, humanity's target to achieve net zero in CO2 emissions.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5° C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely be done to earth's ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste. In the IPCC's Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathways have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1,5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history - 25 years from the year of the installation of the TOWARD 2050 project at Desert Botanical Garden in 2025.
This project will unfold in four parts:
1.) makers are called to create small, environmentally themed textile panels in the style of "prayer flags"
2.) each maker is supplied with climate-change-messaging postcards for each flag they commit to make, that they will then send to their own state's lawmakers to advocate for climate change policies
3.) submitted flags will then be used to define the paths of a colossal on-site labyrinth at the Garden that steps visitors year by year ever closer to 2050 - building awareness and fostering responsibility
4.) and finally, both sides of the flags will be re-purposed to create blankets that will then be donated to people affected by the next climate related catastrophe(s) that sadly, will surely happen as we have seen all too clearly in recent years. Stay tuned for the call for blanket-making volunteers that will go out as the project progresses.
FLAG MAKING PERIOD IS NOW UNTIL THE DEADLINE OF DECEMBER 15, 2024. THE INSTALLATION WILL TAKE PLACE JANUARY - MAY 2025.
