Sunday, May 30, 2010

German musem show hopes to include "polar cities" exhibit in next exhibition in 2011



When Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts) in Germany decided to curate a show about "Climate Capsules" they inadvertently forgot to include polar cities as part of the show. Too bad, because they missed a good chance to show the work of Taiwanese artist Deng Cheng-hong to the world. He is the first person on Earth to come up with designs for polar cities for future survivors of global warming, and Dr James Lovelock of the UK has seen Deng's image and said "Bravo!"

Lovelock gets it. In fact, Lovelock is the father of polar cities.


"What to Do When the Earth Warms Up?" is a good question, and the German media asks that question in writing a story about the new show this summer of 2010.

"Given humankind's lackadaisical response to climate change, a museum in Hamburg is presenting fanciful visions of how humans might adapt to disaster. "Climate Capsules," an exhibition starting Friday, imagines people of the future in oceangoing cities and other artificial, self-contained environmentsm" the report notes. Sadly, the curator neglected to include any images of polar cities in the show. Maybe next time?

"Headlines about the changing climate are more plentiful than political moves to slow it. Among those assuming that bleak predictions will become real is the Hamburg-based Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum for Arts and Crafts). Its Climate Capsules exhibition, which opened today, asks how people can survive in a heating globe," the German media opined.


"Organizers collected a range of bold, sometimes zany, approaches to the threat of an increasingly inhospitable world. Curator Friedrich von Borries points out that, amid all the debate about climate change, there has been little talk of solutions. The focus instead is firmly on slowing or stopping the temperature trend, even though much damage has already been done."

"In the search for alternative solutions, there is a category discussed substantially less often in public: adaptation," the musuem wrote in a press release. Aha! The dreaded A-word! Yes, adaptation. Which is exactly what polar cities are all about, and why the museum will hopefully do a show in the future on polar cities, too.

In ''Climate Capsules'', artists, designers and architects have dreamt up science-fiction-style solutions. Sadly, the show does not include the pioneering work and images of Deng Cheng-hong and his project collaborator Daniel Halevi Bloom.

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