With December’s ice storm, and the recent cold spell, this winter has seen us Torontonians weathering our share of…well, weather. And where do we turn in these #moderntimes to air our thoughts and find community during such events (or, let’s be honest: #any#event#atall?)? To Twitter, of course! Artist Sharon Switzer, in partnership with Pattison Onestop and Art in Transit, has captured the online Twitter reaction to Toronto’s recent ice storm, as well as other individual tweets concerning unusual or extreme weather all over the world, and is broadcasting them in the downtown installation, #crazyweather. And the goal of the project is an important one: to gather seemingly anecdotal, even inane weather tweets in one place to, cumulatively, give a global voice to worrying changes in the climate at large.
If all of this sounds familiar, the installation, which is located on the corner of Yonge and Edward St (just North of Dundas Sq) and which runs until January 31st, is an updated version of one by the same name, currently found in the ROM. And it is part of a larger festival, Carbon 14: Climate is Culture, which has been running since the fall (and which we covered here). Approximately 100 000 pedestrians will pass the installation daily: Kudos to Art in Transit, Pattison Onestop, and Sharon Switzer, for using their reach to highlight such an important issue, and one that has touched so many of us so deeply this winter.
More information available here.