Calls for Action is both a playful and critical intervention, showing the importance of emotional connection to environmental action. Though Earth’s primordial forests act as important carbon sinks and home to vibrant biodiverse communities of life, few people have had the opportunity to experience them first-hand. I wanted to create an opportunity for the public to intimately engage with endangered ecosystems and to hear their own voices within them. It is a reminder that our presence is felt even in places we imagine are remote. Everything is connected, and there is no place that does not feel the consequences of human action, as well as inaction. Calls for Action is an encounter with this reality, but also with the possibility that if we act with intention, if we put our voices together, we can support and regrow what which might otherwise have been silently lost.

— Julian Charrière

Calls for Action marks a bold new direction by French-Swiss artist Julian Charrière, who in a series of participatory interventions bridges the world of contemporary art with large-scale forest conservation. Consisting of two-way livestreams between cultural institutions and endangered natural landscapes, Calls for Action stages an encounter beyond mere spectatorship where through the act of listening and speaking into the forest, we can also speak out on its behalf.

Each iteration is unique and site-specific, responding to the history and ecology of the distinct locations it brings together. A permanent feature of the artwork is the presence of a telephone, through which a dialogue can be established between city and forest. In the latter, omnidirectional microphones are installed to capture local soundscapes, while a small speaker projects speech from the museum visitors. In order to not disturb wildlife, the sound is set below human speech levels, matching that of bird song. Through this interaction, the public is invited to a both playful and radical intervention, becoming both participants and protectors that can lend their voices to some of Earth’s most endangered environments.

Calls for Action is realised in partnership with internationally renowned conservation organisations Art into Acres and Re:wild, and in local collaboration with the Ecuadorian non-profit Fundación Jocotoco, in order to ensure its efforts are undertaken within an environmental and ethical framework. It marks the beginning of a long-term commitment to supporting the permanent conservation of threatened ecosystems, showing how art can be a tool for foregrounding issues of urgent ecological concern, from deforestation to environmental stewardship and sustainable forest management. Representing this need for a renewed planetary kinship, the artwork also presents an opportunity for the public to directly support the conservation of the forests featured in the artwork. Join our CALLS FOR ACTION here!

The first iterations of Calls for Action are set in Ecuador and focus on regions ranked as so-called key biodiversity hotspots. These are sites which while having lost more than 70% of their primary vegetation, are host to thousands of unique species, many of them endemic and endangered, occurring nowhere else on Earth. Representing some of the wettest areas in the world, the sites are habitat to Great Green Macaws, Brown-headed Spider Monkeys, Black-breasted Pufflegs, White-lipped Peccaries, Harpy Eagles, Banded Ground Cuckoos, Geoffroy’s Tamarins, Tapirs, and Pumas, among many others. Beyond being home to a rich variety of animals and plants, coastal and cloud forests of this nature also play an integral role in sequestering carbon and maintaining a stable hydrological cycle, thus enacting a vital purpose in the natural mitigation of climate change.

JULIAN CHARRIÈRE is a French-Swiss artist based in Berlin. A seminal voice in Contemporary Art today, Charrière has been widely exhibited across esteemed institutions and museums around the globe. Marshalling performance, sculpture and photography, his projects often stem from remote fieldwork in liminal or discarded locations, such as volcanoes, ice fields and radioactive sites. By encountering places where acute geophysical identities have formed, Charrière speculates on alternative histories, often looking at materials through the lens of deep geological time. Exploring how our ideas of nature have changed, from the Romantic movement into the Anthropocene, Julian Charrière frequently collaborates with scientists, engineers, art historians and philosophers to deconstruct the cultural traditions which govern how we perceive and represent the natural world. Whether undertaking artistic expeditions or staging immersive installations, the core of his practice concerns itself with how the human being inhabits the world, and how it in turn inhabits us.

ART INTO ACRES is an artist-founded, non-profit initiative that supports large-scale land conservation with a focus on biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples-led efforts. Alongside the support of artists, galleries and institutions, and in collaboration with matching fund partners, Art into Acres has supported the permanent conservation of millions of hectares of tropical and boreal forest to date. Projects are locally-led and based on community-voiced interests.

RE:WILD is a global organization supporting environmental causes around the world. Founded by a group of renowned conservation scientists together with Leonardo DiCaprio and combining more than 35 years of conservation impact, Re:wild is a force multiplier that brings together Indigenous peoples, local communities, influential leaders, nongovernmental organizations, governments, companies, and the public to protect and rewild at the scale and speed we need.

FUNDACIÓN JOCOTOCO protects irreplaceable regions that are essential to maintain life on earth owing to their uniqueness and high concentration of biodiversity. On just 40,000 ha, Jocotoco protects 11% of all bird species in the world. Dozens of plants, reptiles, and amphibians have found their sole refuge in Jocotoco’s reserves, occurring nowhere else. Jocotoco treasures its deep connection to nature. What makes Jocotoco different from other organizations are the ‘boots on the ground,’ 80% of its 124 staff live around the reserves.

FONDATION BEYELER AND GLOBUS partner with Julian Charrière for the first iteration of Calls for Action, opening a live feed between Basel, Switzerland and a Western Andean Cloud Forest in Ecuador. Presented as the second iteration of the ‘Globus Public Art Project’ the live feed is screened in large on the facade of the iconic department store, a site which throughout an ongoing three-year renovation plan is commissioning temporary public artworks. In this version of Calls for Action, a phone booth has been installed on the marketplace below the screen, wherein visitors can both listen to and speak with an ecosystem from which we are not only physically but at times emotionally disengaged from. The “Globus Public Art Project” is curated by Samuel Leuenberger and is on view from 8 June until 6 October 2024.

MUSEUM FRIEDER BURDA In the second iteration of Calls for Action Julian Charrière joins forces with Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, restaging the work as an immersive and participatory experience inside of the gallery. Bringing together the institution, located in the mythical Black Forest wilderness with a Coastal Forest in Ecuador, Calls for Action is on view as part of the museum’s 20th anniversary exhibition ‘I Feel the Earth Whisper’ alongside Bianca Bondi, Sam Falls and Ernesto Neto. Curated by Patricia Kamp and Jérôme Sans, it is on display from 14 June until 3 November 2024.

Julian Charrière, Calls for Action, 2024 Behind the scenes in Western Andean Cloud Forest, Ecuador Copyright the artist; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, Germany Photographer: Alcuin Stevenson