Sounds Of Silence: Maya Lin Commemorates Mother Earth
April 3, 2008 5:10 am Culture, Environment, PeopleArtist Maya Lin Creates Memorial For Environment
Maya Lin, the artist best known for her moving commemoration of veterans with the Vietnam Memorial, is constructing what she calls her “last memorial” in honor of nature lost to the destruction of the earth. The piece is planned on being unveiled on Earth Day 2009 by the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco at Golden Gate Park.
“What Is Missing”: The Environment in Memoriam
The piece, tentatively titled “What Is Missing,” is a somber call to action, pointing out how habitat destruction has driven animals, bird and plants to the brink of nonexistence. Using photography, video, the Internet and other interactive media, Lin hopes to show the world how they can take individual steps towards improving the environment.
Like her other pieces, this memorial will have a list: the names of extinct species. She is also interviewing biologists for testimonials, wanting to impart knowledge and a sense of urgency about how we need to undo the damage now.
Maya Lin: From Artist to Environmental Activist
Lin grew up in southern Ohio and spent much of her childhood wandering the forests. Her environmentalist activism started early, with a petition against Kroger grocery stores to ban animal traps when she was a child. “I grew up surround by land, and it had a huge impact on me,” she said. “We forget to look out and see how incredibly beautiful the world is.”
“Where do we want to be in 50 years?” asked Lin. “The top ten songbirds we grew up with are in a 40 to 70 percent decline. Our oceans are being devastated by overfishing…I just want to bring attention to it and give people the idea that you can do something about it.”
Although Lin is normally commissioned for memorials, she is initiating the project and hoping environmentally conscious donors will help her out. “I want the last one to be so personal, something I care so deeply about,” said Lin.
Thanks to Anne-Marie O’Connor of the Los Angeles Times — read more about Lin’s memorial and current San Diego exhibition here.
Photo Courtesy of Glenn Koenig, Los Angeles Times
Copyright 2008 Matty Byloos
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April 11th, 2008 at 3:16 pm
I read about Maya Lin’s new project in the LA Times, too, great story and a great project. Honoring extinct species in a commemorative list will help raise conciousness worldwide about what humans are doing to this Earth we call home.
Her project sparked in an idea in my imagination, too, and I have embarked on a global roll call project to compile the names of all 6.7 billion people on the Earth at this present time, list the names on a blog in cyperspcae, with the assistance of a team of volunteers all over the world, and use this list of names of humans, all of us, as another wake up call about global warming and climate change. See news here. Ms Lin’s project is newsworthy and very important and I am sure it will be successful. With lots of sponsors and funding. Nice. An important wake up call.
My project, here, http://sixbillion101.blogspot.com, will not have any sponsors or funding, other than my own time and dime, but that’s okay. I don’t need money.
I do hope the news media takes note of my quixotic “global roll call” too one day, to help raise the alarm about the future of the human species. If we don’t get climate change and global warming under control, we might end up living in polar cities in northern regions, which by then will be warm and ice-free. Google “polar cities” to see more on this.
Developing.
Notes:
Climate change website to list names of all 6.6 billion people on Earth
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Website to list 6.6 billion Earthlings in “global roll call”
PRESS RELEASE
for immediate release anytime
after April 15, 2008
Contact: Danny Bloom
Email: danbloom@gmail.com
==========================
Virtual ‘global warming’ museum to host new side-exhibit listing names of all 6.6 billion inhabitants of Earth, country by country, as commemorative time capsule
Volunteers needed to help compile list
It’s a global roll call.
Danny Bloom wants names. Lots of names. In fact, he wants the names of all human beings alive at the present time on planet Earth as part of a public perfomrance art exhibit compiling a commemorative list of all 6.67 billion names — what the climate activist blogger calls a “global roll call” to wake people up about the dangers we are facing in the future regarind global warming.
By compiling the list of all 6.6 billion inhabitants of Earth, Bloom
said he hopes “to highlight the fact that the issues of global warming
do not involve rich nations competing against poor nations, or
rightwing pundits against environmental activists, but rather the fact
that we are all involved in the future we are creating together, in
this day and age.”
To send in your own individual name or a list of family members
and friends to the online virtual museum, Internet users are invited to send an
email to: reporter.bloom@gmail.com Those who do not wish to be included in the list may opt out by stating so in writing.