As part of Ellie Harrison’s Artsadmin residency at Two Degrees Festival 2011, London, four Early Warning Signs were produced and placed out along London’s Commercial Street. Utilising the brazen marketing techniques of capitalism, the signs attempt to grab the attention of passers-by; to remind them of the consequences of excessive consumption and to force climate change back onto the agenda. The harder the wind blows, the faster they go.
In consideration of the environmental compromise of producing such material-heavy permanent signs, for the sake of a one week festival, she felt it important for the festival’s (and her own) integrity, that the signs be allowed to continue to promote their cause long into the future and so she decided to launch this life-long campaign to find suitable arts organisations to ‘adopt’ them on a year-by-year basis, continuing indefinitely into the future.
Site adopted one of her signs in 2012 alongside Dundee Contemporary Arts, and in Glasgow Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Hidden Gardens.