TOWARD 2050
Click on each image for enlargement and description.
Click on each image for enlargement and description.
Toward 2050 - a public engagement artwork, has culminated in an immersive labyrinth installation at Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix, AZ - in the spring of 2025. This social action focuses on the urgency of how we must take part in caring for our planet's health. As visitors experienced this labyrinth, they stepped year-by-year, ever closer to 2050, humanity's target to achieve net zero in CO2 emissions.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5°C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely by done to earth's ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste, In the IPCC's Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathway have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases - 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1.5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history - 25 years from the year of the installation of the TOWARD 2050 project at Desert Botanical Garden in 2025.
Textile work created by nearly 650 makers from 46 U.S. states and 9 countries have become important parts of TOWARD 2050, culminating in this immersive installation at Desert Botanical Garden. Makers were called to create environmentally themed, textile panels in the style of "prayer flags". Our goal was to collect enough double sided flags to define the pathways of this interactive labyrinth experience. That goal was met thanks to the generosity and commitment of all the makers participating in this project.
Finally, panels from these flags are to be re-purposed into blankets that will then be donated to communities affected by the next climate related catastrophe(s).
Toward 2050 Website
KJZZ - Interview with Lauren Gilger
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, global climate is on track to increase by 1.5°C by 2040, and with that, irreparable damage will likely by done to earth's ecosystems if our course is not changed decisively and with haste, In the IPCC's Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report, clear goals and pathway have been defined to reverse our emissions of green house gases - 50% by 2030, and to arrive at net zero emissions by 2050, keeping the global rise in temperature to under 1.5° C in perpetuity. Hence, 2050 marks a very important point in our human history - 25 years from the year of the installation of the TOWARD 2050 project at Desert Botanical Garden in 2025.
Textile work created by nearly 650 makers from 46 U.S. states and 9 countries have become important parts of TOWARD 2050, culminating in this immersive installation at Desert Botanical Garden. Makers were called to create environmentally themed, textile panels in the style of "prayer flags". Our goal was to collect enough double sided flags to define the pathways of this interactive labyrinth experience. That goal was met thanks to the generosity and commitment of all the makers participating in this project.
Finally, panels from these flags are to be re-purposed into blankets that will then be donated to communities affected by the next climate related catastrophe(s).
Toward 2050 Website
KJZZ - Interview with Lauren Gilger