Expo SOS-planet: A cry for help from a planet in need
This year the city of Liège bears the title: “Liège 2010: universal city of the climate”. And the city is certainly worthy of the name, holding a beautiful but confrontational exhibition on climate change: SOS-planet. No time or money have been spared in offering both young and old a fascinating, hours-long journey of discovery through the history of our earth, while creating awareness of the impact of the population on our planet. After three weeks some 12,000 people have already visited SOS-planet at Liège station. The organisers talk of a successful start.
Atlas
An immense globe with the title “SOS-planet” looks out over the station square from the raised platform under the rebuilt station vaulting in Liège. Left to its fate, it seems to be waiting for its inhabitants to get together to do something about its gradual decline. But the passers-by walking below appear more like ants, preprogrammed to keep to the day's task, blind to the dark shadow hanging over them.
Focus on the people
Climate change is the most important challenge facing our planet today. The exhibition tries to map the current situation, find solutions, and make people aware of the climate in the future. This is done by focusing on the people in four ways: people observe, people become concerned, people think, and people act.
In this scenario you start on the side line, but as you pass through the different businesses at the exhibition you realise that you are being transformed to become a protagonist in the full-length film of current climate disturbances. You understand that the will of our society to tackle this problem starts with ourselves.
Spectacular decors
The standard is already set visually in the first room at the exhibition: a projection hall full of flatscreens treats you to beautiful videos showing the splendour of our planet, both natural and the mark of civilisation.
The following three-dimensional decors are stunningly realistic. For example you travel through a tunnel of falling water that freezes, then carefully onto the moving ice of a dried river bed, before entering the humid environment of a practically flooded house. You suddenly experience a distant show from very close up.
In another room you pass straight through a cartload of planks chaotically knocked together in the style of Flemish conceptual artist Arne Quinze. Here and there flatscreens are continuously broadcasting TV news bulletins from across the whole world with images of floods, heat waves, forest fires, extreme rainfall, etc. These images against a background of entangled wood as a symbol of the turmoil of destruction have an overwhelming effect.
From big bang to big mac
“If the history of the earth was just one hour long, modern man would have been born on 31 December at one minute to midnight. Man has a very small place in history, but he is the only living being that has thrown the climate into chaos,” can be read on a calendar of the history of our earth shortened to just one year. This simplification allows a better understanding of nature, and the speed thus the severity of the climate problem.
Further on there is a wall as a blackboard full of chalk drawings, quotes and illustrations brimming with irony and sarcasm about human creations and their repercussions today. “From big bang to big mac” is written in white chalk…or whichever tasteless creation man has already left behind after only “one minute”.
Worth a visit
The exhibition will not leave you unmoved. After the visit you will think twice before buying water in a plastic bottle in the knowledge that its production, packaging and transport require a quarter of the content of the bottle.
The name of the exhibition also speaks volumes. A cry for help from a planet in need. A cry that hopefully will be heard from afar, according to the organisers aiming for a large attendance. And rightly so, because SOS-planet is certainly worth the visit!