Climate Action Movement: We Speak for the Earth

David Forsee (Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design, SMTD)

“We Speak for this Earth” is a year-long embedded collaboration and public artwork between student artists, environmental scientists, engineers, andactivists within the Climate Action Movement (CAM) of the University of Michigan that will culminate in a multimedia direct action, performance, andprojection piece on Earth Day 2020. Through a hybridized fusion of direct action, environmental science, performance art, videography, printmaking andmore media, we will stage large-scale multimodal interventions and smaller iterations throughout the year within/on campus buildings and landscapes.The primary applicants, David Forsee (BFA InterArts) and Matt Sehrsweeney (Masters in Environmental Planning & Policy), are only two of the manycreators and facilitators for our major direct action, as well as numerous smaller interventions leading up to it throughout the year. Through a radicallydecentralized collaboration that includes a diverse array of students and CAM leadership, we will be making art that directly communicates to the publicour central goal of a University commitment to an equitable and just transition to carbon neutrality by 2030 (a timeline set by the United Nations IPCCreport.)