Plight of the Polar Bears
Washington, D.C., September 2008
Background
The Plight of the Polar Bears birthed from the idea to use the polar-bear costume worn by climate activists as an injection point for the Embed Series. I came up with the concept of climate activists posing as displaced homeless polar bears around D.C.
I had not collaborated with anyone yet, but because I wanted several sculptures as opposed to one, I approached Greenpeace to fund it. I thought it would be a good vehicle to get the message into the media and to teach them better how to get press. Their banner drops were so focused on reinforcing the Greenpeace brand that I did not see them as different from the visual pollution ads cause. I proposed the homeless-polar-bear installations, and that they would not be linked to a source. For them that could mean more press instead of another eyesore. Local news likes a mystery on the street. That would be the first wave. Once the mystery was solved, the second wave would be the reveal. For Greenpeace it would be a platform. They liked the idea, especially because a vote on renewing the offshore-drilling moratorium was coming and they wanted pressure on Congress to renew it.
Polar Bear 1
Constitution Avenue median, early morning, rush hour.
Reaction
A Greenpeace photographer said someone on the street removed it because he did not like homeless people being compared to polar bears.
Polar Bear 2
7th Street NW, near Gallery Place.
Reaction
Removed by the DowntownDC BID outreach and safety team — a business-funded street crew legally allowed to remove unattended objects from the commercial sidewalks they manage.
Polar Bear 3
National Mall, halfway between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.
Reaction
It stayed about two hours and was photographed by tourists. Federal park police then taped a closed perimeter. A bomb technician opened the figure and the cart. The only online record I found was a blog post: an onlooker wrote that a squirrel fell from a tree and she thought the bear might hold poison gas.
Polar Bear 4
Columbia Heights, Irving and 14th, by the Metro.
Reaction
Pedestrians took photos. Later police closed the Metro, the street, a school, and the shops. A bomb technician came and destroyed the bear. Local news covered it and the story went viral internationally. I received emails from the press asking if I was behind it. I contacted Greenpeace and told them it was time to take credit. They did. They gave television interviews and used the exposure to push the Senate vote on the offshore-drilling moratorium. Greenpeace then decided to install the last bear for a chaperoned three-day vigil until the eve of the vote.
Press
Common Dreams
DCist
Polar Bear 5
National Mall, in front of the U.S. Capitol.
Reaction
A police officer was present throughout the vigil to keep the Greenpeace chaperone within ten feet of the bear. Beyond that distance the law classifies an object as abandoned.
Lens
Polar Bear 1 was flushed by a vigilante cell who read the object as waste. Polar Bear 2 was waste removal by another route: the BID is not police; they clear commercial sidewalks for business, and they took it as trash. Polar Bear 3 activated a hyper T-cell, the bomb technician. Tape around the cart held other cells back from a possible blast and made a crowd at the perimeter. Polar Bear 4 was the same immune response at stroke scale — Metro, street, school, shops closed — clotting that shut down a part of the city so the image could travel the nervous system. Polar Bear 5 was not left unattended and was not in the format of the others. Greenpeace placed it at the Capitol after the nervous system, the news, had already triggered. A T-cell stayed present to enforce the brain’s code, the law, which classifies an object more than ten feet from a person as abandoned. This makes no sense as an appropriate bodily response since Greenpeace was there with it, but here the immune system was turning confrontational toward Greenpeace. Chaperoning what was now an inert virus that was already being chaperoned was an autoimmune disorder.
Conclusion
The injection worked. Pedestrians met the figures before police did, in the street, not through a clipboard or a post. That live encounter is the part I would repeat. Raising the temperature on global warming was the other intention. A body in a polar-bear head, read as unsheltered, does that job better than a banner. Greenpeace wanted press. They got it. The director thanked me for teaching them that.
What I learned is that collaboration hands over control when you are not the one funding it. Greenpeace went off the brief and put a figure on the National Mall. I was not happy about that. The bomb technician in Columbia Heights felt like a soap opera with a history — nonprofit and police already at each other. It made D.C. look absurd for destroying a homeless polar bear. Greenpeace got the laugh. Spectacle was not the goal. What showed was an antagonistic organization and a city with a grudge, and the city looking stupid.
Glossary
Embed Series. Dressed tape figures placed so they read as people rather than as art.
Virus. A figure that passes as a cell long enough for other cells to stall. It is a virus when it is seen.
Cell. A person in the city.
Camouflage. The clothes and posture that let the figure pass as a cell. A chaperone or a logo spends it.
Flush. Informal removal by a cell who treats the figure as waste.
Hyper T-cell. An official immune response out of scale with the object, here a bomb technician.
Stroke. Clotting that shuts a part of the system: street, Metro, school, businesses.
Nervous system. Media. It carries an encounter from the street to other cells and to the brain.
Brain. City or national government. Here, Congress voting on offshore drilling.
Mystery. The figure found first without a claim. The claim comes after it has been seen.