Tunick’s latest and most spectacular living sculpture created a
symbolic link between people and glaciers, which are rapidly
retreating as a result of climate change.
“The human body is as vulnerable as the melting glacier,” said
Markus Allemann, campaign coordinator for Greenpeace Switzerland.
“These naked people are braving the cold today because they want
decision-makers to wake up and take immediate, forceful, and
coura-geous steps to protect the climate. There is still time, but
it is running out.”
If global warming continues at its current rate, most glaciers
in Switzerland will completely disappear by 2080, leaving nothing
but valleys and slopes strewn with rock debris. Over the last 150
years, alpine glaciers have reduced in size by approximately one
third of their sur-face and half of their mass, and this melting is
accelerating. The Aletsch Glacier retreated 115 meters or 377 feet
in a single year from 2005 to 2006.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) the world only has eight years remaining to take the urgent
action needed to curb catastrophic climate change.
“Climate change now requires fast and courageous political
decisions to radically cut green-house gas emissions and stabilize
global warming. Governments around the world must know that the
people they represent expect and demand them to take action, and we
hope that our collaboration with Spencer Tunick to create this
living sculpture will focus their minds and sharpen their resolve,”
continued Markus Allemann.
Known around the world for his installations, Spencer Tunick
wants people to realize that global climate change is not an
abstract issue, but a hazardous threat which affects us all.
“I want my images to go more than skin-deep. I want the viewers
to feel the vulnerability of their existence and how it relates
closely to the sensitivity of the world’s glaciers”, he said.
VVPR info: Steve Smith, (202) 465-5352 or [email protected]
Notes: Information on the retreat of Swiss glaciers: Glacier Reports (1881-2002) «Die Gletscher der Schweizer Alpen», Jahrbücher der Glaziologischen Kommission der Akademie der Naturwissenschaften Schweiz (SCNAT), published by the Versuchsanstalt für Wasserbau, Hydrologie und Glaziologie (VAW) der ETH Zürich. No. 1-122, (http://glaciology.ethz.ch/swiss-glaciers/).
