at ease under trees

Spiral Q: Art=Action

I'd say at least 30 people were a part of the environmentally conscious spectacle today on campus, led by Spiral Q. My art class has been working with them since they came to us from Philadelphia last week, and we've been through the process of deciding which issue to protest, how it will take form, and then actually creating the giant puppets for the spectacle. Today I wore a 2 foot long cigarette butt attached to my butt, and I fought the plastic bottles to try to get into the trash can, yelling at them that they belonged in the recycling and I in the trash. We had giant broccoli with passports and sickly, non-organic carrots and other wheezing vegetables. There was a 10 foot earth with a thermometer in it's mouth signifying global warning. Oh, and we had people moving around gloomily with black flags chanting, "Caarrrbon, Caaaarrrrbon...." It was a very sad scene until the giant administrator puppet came and turned the light switch off and the solar panel on, and then our scene basically turned into a fantastic dance party with our drummers energizing the crowd, people chanting and parading and waving enormous flags.

I had a spectacular time being a part of such a spectacle, it really had a lot of meaning and power to it. One of the people we gathered from the dining hall described the music as powerful. Another person was telling me how he would like to use the caged egg costume for his activism group striving for cage-free eggs. The spectacle definetly attracted a decent sized crowd, and I hope there is some kind of aftermath to the event. I really feel like this should become a yearly thing--or even more often.

posted by kristine @ 3:31 PM