We are happy to present the following greetings, which reflect the spirit of the event in a multi cultural manner: by Leonie Baumann, Patrick Graichen, Nele Hertling, Mona Jas, R. Andreas Kraemer, Stefan Lukschy, Thomas Quasthoff, Peter Raue and Hans Joachim Schellnhuber.
Prof. THOMAS QUASTHOFF
Multiple winner of the Grammy Awards, curator of the NaturTon Foundation, professor of singing
Image: Bernd Brundert | Being an artist is a political issue. Sharing the responsibility for our environment and our country. As artists, we have the duty to raise our voice against social aberrations. I have just given a recital of poems by Heinrich Heine, who did just that. Heine wrote partly with sarcasm and irony exemplarily about freedom and against the misconduct of authorities.
Just as I, as a university professor, must overcome my own organizational blindness over and over again, we as artists should keep looking beyond our own nose - and be admonishers. The discovery of rusting atomic barrels at the decommissioned nuclear site of Brunsbüttel has only supplied further evidence: there is enough reason.
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Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. HANS JOACHIM SCHELLNHUBER
Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council on Global Change
Image: Frédéric Batier | In times where humankind has become the geological force, we must also take responsibility for the future of our planet. With the energy transition, German policy has decided and set the course for a sustainable transformation of energy systems. This could inspire many other countries to undertake the same efforts. Speaking of inspiration: you, creative people, should now create small and large EnergyTransitionArt: irritating, enlightening, overwhelming. Introduce thoughts in aesthetic formats and actions. Our society suffers from a lack of exercise - get society back on her feet!
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NELE HERTLING
Vice-Chair of the Academy of Arts, Grande Dame of the German off-culture
| The crucial phenomena of climate change and the energy transition must be addressed not only by political and technological arguments. Social and cultural aspects also play a decisive role in this process of global transformation.
More vibrantly than science and technology, culture, with its diverse artistic forms and visionary approaches to politics and society can induce behavioral changes in politics and society. The EnergyTransitionArt Project can make an important contribution.
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Prof. Dr. PETER RAUE
Lawyer, art lover and liason
Image: Raue LLP | Energy Transition: We read about melting glaciers and dying fish - and keep on living as if this has to be the way. Politicians lack courage and perhaps an electorate following them, to do what has to be done. Without the awareness that the energy transition will sustain our lives, and those of our children and grandchildren, there will be no energy transition. What, if not the art, who if not the artists can find and create a language which has the power to open the eyes and the hearts of those in power, to instill courage in those who not only want the energy transition, but who also work to achieve it, those who make sacrifices to change their own habits and do what is necessary. That is why, despite my modest powers, but with deep conviction, I support this project: EnergyTransitionArt. I admire the initiators of this action and hope for artists who will put their work and their persuasive power and their anger at the service of this world-sustaining project.
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Dr. PATRICK GRAICHEN
Managing Director of Agora Energiewende
| My impression is that many people are now deterred from technocratic energy policy discourse around renewable energy law, governance issues, prices and costs. Through sensuality and heart, the EnergyTransitionArt Project can re-activate that spirit which shows what is really at stake: a clean, long-term energy supply, which leaves a world without high-level radioactive waste and free from greenhouse gases. A clean atmosphere to hand down to our children - or simply a future without debts.
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LEONIE BAUMANN
President of Art Academy Berlin Weißensee
Image: Nihad Nino Pusija
| The scenarios about the development of the world are shocking, the evidence is overwhelming and, yet, nothing happens... If arguments alone come to nothing, what is missing to get an insight, so that a change in thinking can take place? More than ever, it is certainly necessary to build a bridge between science and everyday life, because beyond political agreements, a global change begins concretely in each of us. If purely scientific arguments are too abstract, perhaps artistic ideas and points of view would manage to produce a combination of knowledge and vision, recognition and feelings, so as to open up entirely new and unknown approaches to the subject. Artists can inspire more and more people to dedicate themselves wholeheartedly and with all their senses to achieve socio-political changes, and the energy transition!
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STEFAN LUKSCHY
Director and writer
Image: Andreas Gabel | The art of the energy transition is extremely difficult to control. Above all, our politicians do not have proficiency in it.
Maybe we should let the artists do it. In the end every artist is full of energy - and instead of the EEG (Erneuerbares Energien Gesetz – that is Renewable Energy Law, or electroencephalogram) we should make an EKG (Electrocardiogram, or Erneuerbares Kunst Gesetz – that is a Renewable Art Law); because when the mind cannot find a solution, the heart must accomplish this task.
Without the energetic use of imagination we will probably get stuck. And who, if not an artist, can be responsible for the imagination. Oil belongs to canvas and not to the sea surface. So, dear artists, think with all your energy of the transition and educate our politicians in the challenging art of energy transition. This brings to mind, Karl Valentin’s sentence: "Art is beautiful, but it is a lot of work".
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R. ANDREAS KRAEMER
Founder and Director of Ecologic Institute (among the top 10 environmental think-tanks globally)
| Turning points take place in our minds, and the energy transition is one of them. Creative rethinking is necessary so that options for the future are first thought, then sketched, copied, modified, refined and shared before they are discussed and decided by politics and society. On such a pathway future scenarios accumulate in people’s heads, to the extent that these scenarios reflect their light as a coming reality and light the way to their own achievement. Sometimes a desirable future cannot be expressed in clear words, it needs other forms of mediation: EnergyTransitionArt.
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MONA JAS
Artist, lecturer and art agent
Image: Osman Bozkurt
| It is a long time already, that a fundamental change in our social contract is needed. Impetus to achieve this can only be set from open-ended thinking and acting, beyond an attitude directed towards a material increase in value, as it is intrinsically in artistic acts. Like in no other field of activity - and with no other manifestation of life - artistic processes are in close connection to energy, as a fundamental metaphysical dimension. Art itself can even be perceived as a separate and independent form of energy. Art releases with its artistic inertia new energy at many other levels, and could therefore be used as an important social force for urgent and imperative change. The merit of the EnergyTransitionArt Project is to recognize this relationship and give art a platform, because otherwise those who are artists usually do it at their own risk and against the current.
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