“I DEMAND THAT SOMEBODY PAYS THE £100 million!”

Frieze Art speech.pdf

For our review we have to go back in time to last year when Vivienne saw a children’s collage in her polling station at the Clapham Manor Primary School. “There was this collage. It is about love, innocence and trust. The kids are really interested in animals and the environment, the writing is so creative, the language seems to be like new-born. I wondered if somebody can take the painting down and somebody would buy it and give the money to the rainforest. I had this in my mind and then I was invited to give this talk”

So CR went to the school last week and asked if we could remove it from the wall so that we can raise some money for Cool Earth. The school was very much in favour of the idea, the teachers agreed spontaneously. Students who work with us re-created the collage in our studio in Battersea and in no time it was on the podium with Vivienne at Frieze Talk.

Vivienne started speaking about art, about the RELEVANCE of art and the art lover as a freedom fighter for a better world, for different values. That we could become more cultivated, more human through the pursuit of art and perfection.

“The terrible thing today is that everybody acts as if nothing’s changed, as if nothing’s happened – that this gives me the feeling of living in a mad world because the reality of what we face is just completely avoided. This is mad, absolutely mad!”

“Now we are getting into something a bit crazy”, she said, that she feels it is really really crazy because as an activist she is concerned and talking about how do we save the world and now “I am standing here with a kid’s collage, saying let’ save the world with this collage! I just feel the enormity of the task and the littleness of the means to accomplish the task, it’s just crazy and I think we do live in a crazy world.”

“We did not have enough time to work out yet how we sell the painting but I am going to say we are going to do it – how much is it worth? Is it relevant? Who would buy this”?

There is a price on this kid’s collage! We’ve got a project with Cool Earth and they need £ 2 million to save a place in Papua New Guinea that would be turned into a palm plantation to save the forest there.

Or even more accurate – Vivienne is happy if you want to call this the real madness – THERE IS A PRICE ON THE COLLAGE!  It is worth 10 MILLION POUNDS  because that is what we need to save the rainforest and whoever wants to pay this kind of money for it – there is a space left on the bottom right corner of the painting and whoever buys it can write on “I saved the rainforest ” – than this painting would be RELEVANT.

“In fact, I DEMAND THAT SOMEBODY PAYS THE 100 MILLION! to give the money to Cool Earth so that they can finalize their plan to save the equatorial rainforests by 2020. Before we do anything we have to save the rainforests!”

“I just feel I am getting more and more crazy, I just think I had enough and I am just getting down on this floor and wait if somebody comes and gets me. Really! That’s it!! – these were Vivienne’s last words!

CR is busy organizing the event where the collage will be sold to the one(s) who will then be able to declare “I SAVED THE RAINFOREST!” We will keep you updated and informed when this will take place – THE REAL MADNESS WILL HAPPEN!