The Green Drawings: Notes on the Indulgence Trade
Lecture performance with possibility of doing penance, monochrome drawings, sound. First performed July 14 in Beddingestrand (Sweden)
Collaboration with Nina Slejko Blom

The work examines the effects of industrial exploitation of natural resources and the neoliberal belief in the market to self regulate and thereby save the world. Using the free market logic we are actually cleaning air - while making art commerce. The complete value of every sale goes to planting trees in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya and Tanzania. At current prices, every sold drawing will enable us to pay for the planting of 15 trees. Part of the The Green Drawings project.

 

The climate change crisis is not something that will happen in the future, it is happening now. Only, it is happening elsewhere, in the poorest parts of the world where people who have done little to cause it live. Cyclical periods of drought that have turned into a devastating constant in Sub-Saharan Africa, the five-year record breaking freak drought in Syria, flooded Bangladesh, there is little need to speculate on the possible effects of climate change, they are on constant display. But hey, don't let them rain on our parade — as long as we find better ways to stop refugee ships trying to cross the Mediterranean it is not our problem is it? (Salvini's already onto that.) High CO2 levels make us stupid. Just like in a poorly ventilated classroom, the learning capacity decreases when the amount of CO2 rises. This could maybe explain our insistence on keeping on with business as usual, trusting that the market will save the day. Despite the mind-boggling evidence, we keep being unable to see that constant economic growth and cleaner Earth are not part of the same equation. What nobody talks about is scaling down. Moderation doesn't sell. But Green Drawings do! For all of you driving cars, browsing Internet, flying & shopping for pleasure etc., we have prepared a stash of drawings, please buy them to compensate for your environmental sins. At 300sek/drawing we will plant trees and clean the air with the money. The more we sell, the more trees we will plant. — And ...the fewer scary foreigners we’ll have knocking on our doors. Time to play our game of soul-redeeming commerce once more!