Earth Speakr

On Friday November 27 Ocean Space will collaborate once again with Earth Speakr, a project created by the artist Olafur Eliasson together with his studio, involving a group of schools from the Veneto region tasked with imagining the city of the future. On this occasion, students will be invited to reflect on the places where they live.

The city is a place of memory, it preserves the collective memories of the communities that inhabit it, it preserves the passing of the eras that have come and gone, from its origins through its various styles, highlighting the individual elements which form the whole. But what are they? Shapes, materials, symbols, elements that are similar in some cultures, and different from others, making it unique.

But what kind of city awaits us in the future? What do students imagine or hope for?

The students, depending on the grade they belong to, will be invited to reflect on how cities are changing, how polluted they are, and what should be done to improve them. They will become real researchers, urban planners, philosophers, and sociologists. By experimenting with collages and three-dimensional constructions, at the end of the activity they will be invited to create a collective model, whether flat or three-dimensional, which will be the cumulative result of their own individual creations, and will be invited to share their message to adults through the Earth Speakr app.

Information and reservations at education@ocean-space.org.

Earth Speakr is a project conceived by the artist Olafur Eliasson, which invites children and young people to express their ideas about how to protect the planet, while inviting adults to listen to them.

Earth Speakr uses augmented reality and includes a free app available on the App Store and Google Play, and an interactive website translated into 25 languages: http://earthspeakr.art

In collaboration with renown institutions, Studio Olafur Eliasson has jointly developed toolkits which are designed to promote the use of Earth Speakr in various contexts. Each toolkit is designed to facilitate interaction with the work of art, from the exploration of existing messages to the creation of new messages.

Credit: Olafur Eliasson, Earth Speakr, 2020, for the Federal Foreign Office on the occasion of the German Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2020. Photo: Lars Borges

Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson (b. 1967) works with sculpture, painting, photography, film, installation, and digital media. His art is driven by his interests in perception, movement, embodied experience, and feelings of self and community. Not limited to the confines of the museum and gallery, his practice engages the public through architectural projects, interventions in civic space, arts education, policy-making, and climate action. Since the mid-1990s, Eliasson has realised numerous major exhibitions and projects around the world. In 2019, he was named UNDP Goodwill Ambassador for climate action and the sustainable development goals.

Located in Berlin, Studio Olafur Eliasson comprises a large team of craftsmen, architects, archivists, researchers, administrators, cooks, art historians, and specialised technicians.