RETHINK – Contemporary Art & Climate Change was an exhibition held in Copenhagen in 2009-2010. The exhibition featured works by 26 international artists, the works are aimed at creating new ways for the public to think about and discuss various climate change issues.
Argentinian artist-architect Tomas Saraceno’s Biospheres installation was featured in the Rethink exhibition. The work was inspired by careful scientific studies of the formation of clouds, soap bubbles and the geometric principles behind spider webs. Some of the spheres contain self-regulating plant ecosystems while the largest of the spheres is available for the public to climb inside. On the ground, spheres filled with water stabilise the entire structure.
Saraceno imagines a Utopian future where science and nature work together in perfect harmony; but are the Biospheres an optimistic look at a greener future? Or a dim outlook on a tragic future where a world is destroyed by climate change?
In an article in The guardian by Madeleine Bunting in 2009 she discusses her experience climbing into one of the large suspended plastic bubbles; ‘As I step gingerly on to its see-through floor, I can peer down at the gallery 100ft below. When I’m joined by one of the museum staff, I become unsteady. We crawl around this airborne plastic yurt like babies and then, feeling giddy, stop to sit and talk about how our children might end up living in a city of such bubbles, sealed off from a contaminated earth; about who might be lucky enough to have such a refuge; how they might sing their children lullabies of a lost earth. It’s an eerie conversation to have with a stranger, both of us imagining a deeply tragic future that seems highly plausible.’
Discussions such as this are the very point of these works as she later discusses with the artist himself; ‘When I tell Saraceno of my experience in his bubble, he is delighted. “Perfect” he laughs. This, he says, is the role art has to play in tackling climate change. “Art is about trying to rethink the things you take for granted.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/02/climate-change-art-earth-rethink
Below is a video featuring an interview with the artist about the work.
Felicity Burke
all art is quite useful 
Saraceno’s artworks are really interesting in the way they create discourse and cause people to think ‘what if’ in the future. Living in a bubble may seem humorous to some but it not be far from reality in the future! I think posing a possible future is a very interesting and effective way to make people think of the implications of their actions now, for the future. -Alex.