How new Art Installation ‘Sagacity’ is Amplifying Glaswegian Voices During COP26
Artist curator Aidan Moesby’s latest project: ‘Sagacity’ uses Twitter to highlight the link between the climate emergency and our mental health
Housed in the City Centre’s pop-up Climate Fringe Café, high-tech art project ‘Sagacity’ is pulling in curious Glaswegians, from 8AM until 4:30PM, to observe, engage, and interact, using social media. The project, which will delve into the city’s ‘mood’ during COP26, went live to the public on Monday, and is set to run for the duration of the summit.
The climate conscious artwork is an unconventional take on the periodic table, swapping out chemical elements for human feelings, granting visitors a real-time, visual ‘exploration into the relationships between outer physical weather, and our internal psycho-emotional weather’, as explained on the artist curator’s website.
Moesby said: “As someone who’s worked as an environmentalist, a therapist and an artist, I wanted to create something that could tie all of those things together, using technology.
“Sagacity is a wellbeing indicator, but I also created it as a way of increasing our emotional vocabulary and to show people that it’s okay to discuss difficult things, breaking taboos around mental health.”
“It’s set up using Twitter-based technology, so whenever someone tweets how they’re feeling, along with the COP26 hashtag, Sagacity will scrape Twitter for the phrase you’ve used, and the associated emotion will light up on the table, fading back after time if it isn’t used again.
“We have a visual record of how the table will change over a period of time, so we’re taking snapshots of how Glasgow feels before, during, and after the COP.”
The artwork spent two-and-a-half years in development, before being launched at the Edinburgh Science Festival in 2015. In its six-year run, Sagacity has toured locations like Lumiere Durham, The Great North Festival, The United Nations, various medical conferences, the BBC Free Thinking Festival, and many more.
For the project’s Glaswegian rendition, Moesby was able to collaborate with climate change coalition ‘Stop Climate Chaos Scotland’ to help bring the piece to life, and sought out Scots poet and TikToker Len Pennie, who helped add Scots words to the table (watch one of the TikToks HERE)
Pennie said: “I think it was important to add Scots words to the project because, although visitors might recognise some of the phrases, there will also be words on the table that are new to people, and they might end up adopting into their vocabulary.
“Scots is extremely relevant just now, especially in the digital age when people should be able to express themselves authentically online, in written form.”
Moesby hopes that Sagacity is also able to shed light on mental health issues brought on by concerns over our changing environment.
In 2018, a study by Mental Health Foundation found that 42% of Scottish parents thought their children were anxious about major world events, with 33% of that figure attributed to climate change and global warming. Since then, we can only assume that figure has shot up, as the COP26 summit pushes environmental emergency into society’s forefront.
Moesby said: “Young kids are especially impacted by climate change, in an emotional sense.
“I don’t think that climate issues being so prevalent in the media has made climate anxiety worse, I just think it means we have to acknowledge, and have honest conversations about the environment. As long as we’re talking about our feelings, we can make it easier to live with.”
Sagacity was also developed with ease of access in mind, for people with disabilities. As a disabled artist curator himself, Moesby’s dedication to inclusion and accessibility underpins the bulk of his work. He said: “I know for a fact disabled people are underrepresented in the art world. There’s still a lot of barriers to inclusion, whether that’s digital barriers, financial barriers, or health barriers.
Aiden Moesby created and curated the project
“Whenever I’m curating, I’ll work alongside partners to make projects as accessible as possible. We’ll always have information in multiple formats, like audio tours for exhibitions, or transcripts, or if it’s a visual piece, videos will be captioned, and we’ll have audio descriptions.”
At its core, Sagacity is a project that gives Glasgow’s ‘unheard’ masses a chance to have their voices heard, shedding light on issues both raised, and caused by the COP26 summit.
Moesby said: “I really just want Sagacity to highlight the everyday impact of climate change. We see the floods and fires every day in the news, but we never discuss how people’s lives are affected in more subtle ways. It’s all about getting the ordinary person in the street’s voice heard.”