Art Works USA NEWS RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Franklin Furnace Alum and InClimate artist, Billy X. Curmano, joins with more than 100 organizations and thousands of people taking part in the People’s Climate March September 21st in New York City. The permit allows the climate marchers to take to the main thoroughfares of Manhattan just two days before President Obama and world leaders gather for an emergency Climate Summit at the United Nations. The NYPD approved route starts at Columbus Circle on Sunday at 11:30 am and continues on 59th Street then down 6th Avenue to 42nd Street and on to 11th Avenue.
Two dedicated trains and hundreds of buses will bring activists to New York from all over the country. There’s a site to aid with travel and housing in NYC: http://peoplesclimate.org/transportation
Over 750 organizations world-wide are participating both in and out of NYC with major marches and solidarity events that will make this the largest climate action in history. Talk is cheap. The people are united in a common theme that demands bold action, not just rhetoric, on climate change. In New Delhi, demonstrations begin the day before New York. Australia has marches across the continent with the biggest in Melbourne. Berlin, London and Paris all have major marches scheduled. The list goes on and includes Kathmandu, Rio, Sao Paulo, Jakarta, Dublin, Manila, Seoul, Mumbai and Istanbul. The climate action is anticipated to represent roughly 100 million people around the world.
In New York, participating organizations include the largest transit workers union, art, student, environmental and religious groups, indigenous peoples and a coalition of buddhist monks. A Peoples Climate Convergence runs from September 19-21 with speakers and teach-ins and a group of artists, Peoples Climate Art, occupied a Brooklyn warehouse to build objects and signage for the march.
InClimate artist, Billy X. Curmano, intends to blend with other activists and climate specialists at Chicago’s Union Station for a relatively low carbon footprint journey to NY aboard the San Francisco Peoples Climate Train. His daily climate thoughts posted continuously since January 1, 2013 to the blog at www.billyx.net will reach #624 in Chicago. The thoughts range with both good and bad climate news, innovations, what can be done, parables, fables and poetry which are then re-posted to the InClimate Facebook page. From within the Peoples Climate Actions, he will continue the posts along with pop-up live art performances and water rituals.
Water resources are changing along with the climate from too much - with sea level rise, storms and floods - to - too little with prolonged droughts and contamination. The abundance, absence and changing states of water are apparent in Billy X’s extreme environmental art trilogy. He fasted on only juice and water for 42 days in Death Valley as a comment on overconsumption and the absence of water. He traveled to the Arctic Circle on public transportation to experience its changing states. In aqua abundance, he swam 2,367.4-miles of the Mississippi River from its Minnesota Headwaters to the Gulf of Mexico as a performance and environmental statement. Signed and numbered vials with the “Father of Waters” will accompany the artist in rituals that honor water as the source of life.
InClimate: Climate Change Solutions, Awareness and Action confronts global warming through art by calling upon artists, in collaboration with climate change specialists, to find solutions and antidotes for mitigating or adapting to our world’s most catastrophic problem. Because of the complexity of the subject, each artist or artist team is consulting or collaborating with a climate change specialist from one of the sciences, law, economics, or another appropriate field. Partnering with community organizations, InClimate is going directly to underserved neighborhoods in three boroughs of New York City—including areas most vulnerable. Curator Regina Cornwell conceived and is organizing InClimate under the auspices of Franklin Furnace.
http://peoplesclimate.org/march/
http://350.org/about/media/
http://convergeforclimate.org/home
http://peoplesclimate.org/arts/
http://inclimate.org/
http://www.franklinfurnace.org/