The Green Drawings - I Pledge
Artist's book (200 copies), audience interaction (pledges).
Collaboration with Nina Slejko Blom

During EKO 8, International Triennial of Art and Environment in Maribor Slovenia (2021), The artist's book The Green Drawings - I Pledge was offered to the visitors in exchange for pledges to perform environment friendly actions or adding climate friendly behaviour to their everyday lives. The signed pledges were hung in place of the books on the wall, gradually changing the installation.

The Green Drawings is a project that uses the logic of free market capitalism to limit the total amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into the atmosphere. Current environmental politics put great faith in the free market to govern emissions. The amount of CO2 a country is allowed to release per year is limited, and big polluters must buy the rights for their emissions. Due to the finite number of such rights, if demand rises, so do the prices. This, in turn, creates an incentive for corporations to limit their emissions. In other words, if it is profitable, the market itself will save the world. But for that to happen the total number of emission rights would have to be severely reduced compared to the situation today.

The Green Drawings: I Pledge is the fifth in a series of Green Drawings presentations. The first iteration saw a series of green drawings – green in both senses of the word – on sale for 20 € each. The complete value of every sale went to the purchase of emission rights that were then locked away from the market. In the fifth iteration, the visitors can exchange previously collected descriptions of green deeds in book form for their own promises of green behaviour. From a cynical perspective, the project uses the same neoliberal logic that controls carbon dioxide emissions, to enable art consumers to buy themselves a guilt-free conscience.