Walk It Back commission: 10 First Aid Boxes. A travelling exhibition for climate activist Craig Cohon

Daudy created 10 boxes each representing a different means of Carbon Removal. The exhibition travelled with Walk It Back along the 4,000 mile journey to Istanbul. Please see here for details and descriptions of the individual works https://walkitback.org/first-aid-boxes/

Craig Cohon walked 4,250km from London to Istanbul to raise awareness of Carbon Removal and fund new research. Cohon commissioned what became a set of First Aid Boxes from Daudy as a focus for workshops and meeting people along the way. There are currently 10 principal methods of Carbon Removal in practice:

Afforestation/reforestation

Biochar

BECCS

Ocean-based methods

Soil carbon sequestration

Direct air capture

Enhanced mineralization

Blue carbon habitat restoration

Building with biomass

Algal bloom cultivation

Cohon has now convened a Coalition of the Willing – a diverse group of carbon removal champions including city leaders, policy makers, CEOs of businesses, experts, academics and activists – who are all committed to driving forward this critical issue. The project has been widely covered by the news eg https://news.sky.com/story/craig-cohon-businessman-walks-over-2-600-miles-from-london-to-istanbul-to-promote-carbon-capture-12896757 and he raised some $800,000 for Carbon Removal charities, spoke at the Davos World Economic Forum etc https://www.weforum.org/stories/2022/11/this-entrepreneur-is-aiming-to-reverse-his-carbon-footprint-here-s-how/ and with world leaders as well as locals along the way. It was a very touching project, a guy trying to redeem his carbon footprint for the betterment of the world.

Daudy developed her own visual language for the project. She has a longstanding interested in language and experiments with it in her work not just creating codes and languages but also recording oral history projects as part of her larger interest in human beings. Daudy speaks seven languages as well as her native English: Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese and Classical Chinese (mostly forgotten) some Portuguese and very rudimentary Latin. In her work she enjoys experimenting with words and grammar. This includes creating music graphic scores the best known being the score she created at Yorkshire Sculpture Park with an accompanying sound piece sung by Sarah Gabriel.

For an early iteration of the Walk It Back commission for Cohon Daudy developed a new visual language (no sound). Combining alchemical symbols, classical Chinese seal script and Egyptian hieroglyphs Daudy’s project for walked it back explored the creation of a new language composed of cross-fertilised ancient symbols, re-formed to express cutting edge environment-conservation technologies. If anyone is curious about this the artist would love to share her creation process.

The 10 First Aid Boxes are awaiting exhibition at Columbia University’s Climate Change School, which educates future climate leaders to address the urgent challenges facing our planet with graduate degree programs.

Small documentary explaining the project:

Craig Cohon:https://www.craigcohon.com/

Walk It Back: https://walkitback.org/

Carbon Removal: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/outreach/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Factsheet_CDR.pdf

Impact of Walk It Back campaign: https://walkitback.org/impact/

Coalition of the Willing: https://walkitback.org/coalition-of-the-willing/