"Reflections of Tomorrow" - participants

Lachezar Bojadziev

“Urgent Measures (1): Kassel needs an Airport”, 2009
(Project in-progress since May 2007)

Imagine what is the annual contribution of the entire international art world to environmental pollution caused by trains, plains, cars and other means of transportation to-and-from an art event for curators, artists, critics, audience... The annual Carbon Dioxide (CO2) footprint of the international art world must be tremendous. Once I tried to calculate my own career long CO2 footprint by going online and calculating all the millage I have taken since 1991 and the total of my (average) share of CO2 pollution caused by being a professional artist... What if we calculate the CO2 footprint of a Documenta, or a Venice, or a Sydney Biennial...?
Kassel for instance, is reachable only by train from either Frankfurt or Berlin... This means that on top of pollution caused by plain travel, there is also the pollution caused by train travel. What if at least train travel is eliminated from going to/from Kassel...? That would be a huge step forward. That’s why Kassel needs an airport!!!

“Urgent Measures (2): Venice needs an Underground (a metro)”, 2009
(Project in-progress since May 2007)

When in Venice for the La Biennale di Venzia I always feel a bit guilty and a bit annoyed... – guilty because as an art tourist I contribute to the general problem of the city, which is sinking in the sea; and annoyed because I always have to march down these narrow alleys in the midst of huge crowds of fellow Venice-abusers (art or otherwise) or take the vaporettos in a similar situation...
In order to save the city of Venice from both sinking and the crowds, I thought it would be nice if a special metro (underground, subway, U-bahn, etc.) is constructed there... The tubes, if laid down on the bottom of the lagoon (which is solid), will support the ground of the islands; the plan of the metro, if arranged as a spiral starting in Mestre and ending up at the Venice Airport, will take care of the crowds as well as of all the islands’ support...