Hermann Josef Hack declares Bali, venue of the next Wold Climate Conference, a climate refugee camp

Happening with miniature refugee camp at 12.30 on 29 November in front of Haus Carstanjen, seat of the UN Climate Secretariat, Martin-Luther-King-Strasse 8, Bonn

Hotels beds are already in short supply on the island of Bali. The World Climate Conference, which will take place on the island from 3 to 10 December, will attract more than 10,000 participants from all over the world, mostly representatives of those countries which are considered the main perpetrators of climate change, but also representatives of the poorest countries which suffer most from the effects of this change. The summit is being planned and organized by the UN Climate Framework Convention, a UN Secretariat with its headquarters in Bonn. The head of the 15-strong organization team (Conference Affairs Services) which is planning and coordinating the conference is the former Sudanese diplomat Salwa Dallalah.

The artist Hermann Josef Hack will declare the whole island of Bali a Climate Refugee Camp in front of the headquarters of the UN organization team at 12.30 on 29 November. Hack has already declared individual towns Climate Refugee Camps, for example Kassel, home of the documenta, in June 2007 and the Reichstag in Berlin on 20 September (in the presence of the Vice-President of the German Bundestag, Katrin Göring-Eckardt).

Hack says: “With this action I intend to set an example and show that we must pay more attention to the alarmingly growing number of climate refugees. People are being forced to leave their homes because our behaviour is contributing towards the destruction of their habitat by causing drought, floods or tornadoes. What are we doing to help these people? We are raising the barbed wire fences along the coasts of southern Europe! This cannot be the solution and will not keep them away in the long term. Only if we really change our behaviour now and prevent further climate change can we help both these people and ourselves!”

The artist has made a name for himself with his Arme-Socken-Teppich, a carpet made from thousands of socks belonging to unemployed people — arme Socke (literally “poor sock”) being German slang for “poor soul” — which he unrolled in front of the Office of the German Chancellor and with happenings in front of the Reichstag. Hack paints pictures on tent canvas to accompany these activities. The theme of climate change is not new for him. Viewers of his programmes on “Van Gogh TV“ at the documenta IX in 1992 were able to chat interactively with climate researchers on the subject of the ozone hole and its effects on society. Hack’s global telephone link-up between researchers at the North Pole and the South Pole and museum visitors (Polarnacht (Polar Night), Siegburg, 30.7.1994) was included in the Guinness Book of Records.

The artist considers active engagement for “the aesthetics of worldwide survival” to be more important than the awards he has received, e.g. from the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.

You are cordially invited to the event in front of the UN Climate Secretariat in Haus Carstanjen, Bonn.