The Canary Project: Bloomington, Indiana

Glacial, Icecap and Permafrost Melting: Cordillera Blanca, Peru, 2008. Photography by Susannah Sayler.
New York photographer Susannah Sayler read an article by Elizabeth Kolbert about climate change and began in 2006 to photograph sites where the change was manifesting dramatic change. The glaciers of Austria and Peru, coral reefs in the Pacific, the ice shelves of the Antarctic--that was a striking enough project in its own right. But as Susannah and her husband Ed Morris began to discover when exhibiting the photographs, many other artists wished to participate. When I visited Susannah and Ed at Indiana University recently to give a talk during their residency, I found they had taken over the campus gallery with works by a variety of artists.

In addition to Susannah’s photographs, and a cautionary installation that she and Ed had arrayed around a poker table (Quartet for the End of Time), they displayed objects drawn from the university’s history museum, herbarium, library, and biology department, each selected to demonstrate how climate change resonates throughout time and space. Joshua Kit Clayton came and held conversations with viewers and focus groups, Jon Santos mounted his spooky Sublimation of Ice work in a darkened room, the meltwaters forming a mirror for our complicity in global warming; and, Annie Murdock mounted her stunning Increase Your Albedo, an array of white dresses created from old shirts. Eve Mosher’s HighWaterLine project from New York was also represented, and Fritz Haeg had come to talk about wild gardens in urban environments.

Many art groups around the world are addressing climate change, but few if any have undergone the profound transformation from initial premise to working practice undertaken by Sayler and Morris. What began as a rephotographic project has morphed into an audacious and ever-evolving community program based on research and manifested through collaborative multi-media exhibitions and programs. The Canary Project is not just important as an art project, but as a program vital to public dialogue over a contentious and critical global issue.

We’re going to be collecting the archive of their project for the CA+E Library, and also developing links to their proposed website, which will be a living artwork in and of itself, the primary access point into the project’s archive, and a link to other artists and researchers working in the field.