Plight of the Polar Bears

Washington, D.C., September 2008

BACKGROUND

After working on the Embed Series since 2006, and seeing the power the figures had in the street, I wanted to try to leverage that politically. I saw the polar bear suit, the mascot for global warming, as the perfect injection point for the virus. The figures would be set up as if they were homeless: panhandling, digging through trash, a shopping cart. A friend had a contact at Greenpeace and set up a meeting. They were a perfect candidate because I thought they were going about things the wrong way. I explained that branding the actions with large Greenpeace banners was meant to get press and raise awareness; it was doing the opposite. The media was tired of the banner. It read as look-at-me, and the press was looking away. I suggested we install the figures without identifying them, get traction in local news and social media, and let the mystery build. This would be front-end press. Once the mystery is solved, the second wave is when Greenpeace gets the media platform. Legislation on the offshore-drilling moratorium was coming to a vote, so it was a clean target.

Polar Bear 1
Constitution Avenue median, early morning, rush hour.

A Greenpeace photographer said someone on the street took it down because they did not like people in that situation being compared to polar bears.



Polar Bear 2
7th Street NW, near Gallery Place.

Removed by the DowntownDC BID outreach and safety team — a business-funded street crew legally allowed to remove unattended objects from the commercial sidewalks they manage.



Polar Bear 3
National Mall, halfway between the Capitol and the Washington Monument.

It stayed in place for about two hours and was photographed by tourists. Federal park police then taped a closed perimeter. A bomb technician opened the figure and the cart. The only online record I found was a blog post: a woman wrote that a squirrel fell from a tree and she thought the bear might hold poison gas.



Polar Bear 4
Columbia Heights, Irving and 14th, by the Metro.

People took pictures, and then police closed the Metro, the street, a school, and the shops. A bomb technician arrived. The figure was cut open and destroyed. This was the story that went out on all the local news, onto social media, and was picked up online nationally and internationally.



Polar Bear 5
National Mall, in front of the Capitol. Three-day vigil timed to a Senate vote on the offshore-drilling moratorium.

Police said if anyone stepped more than ten feet from the figure it would be removed. An officer stayed with it. It remained because it was chaperoned.



LENS

Figure 1 was removed by a vigilante blood cell. He read the object as waste and flushed it.

Figure 2 was also treated as waste. The BID team is not law enforcement. Their job is to keep the commercial streets clear for local business. They performed a waste removal.

Figure 3 activated a hyper T-cell: the bomb technician. Taping the perimeter kept other cells back from a possible blast and produced a crowd at the tape.

Figure 4 activated the same hyper T-cell. Closing the street, the businesses, the Metro, and a school is better read as a stroke response: unnecessary clotting that shut down that part of the system.

Figure 5 was not in the format agreed for the five sculptures. It was not left unattended. Greenpeace placed it in front of the Capitol after the earlier figures had already been carried by the news, and used that nervous system. The hope was that the nerve would move the brain to a legislative decision that would help the global environment.

The sculpture was chaperoned. A T-cell stayed nearby to keep the object from being left abandoned and to enforce a ten-foot tether between owner and object. The virus was no longer a virus. It was a standoff between Greenpeace and local law enforcement, timed to a Congressional vote on the offshore-drilling moratorium.

CONCLUSION

The figures were meant to act on the cells around them, to travel the nervous system into the news, to reach the brain, and to signal a problem that belongs to the global environment in which every city lives.

I recommended against placing a figure on the National Mall. Greenpeace wanted a direct line to the brain. I expected a bomb technician there. The Mall response did not make the story. The amplification came from Figure 4: a second hyper T-cell, a stroke that closed a street, a school, businesses, and a Metro station. The absurd image of a homeless polar bear destroyed by a bomb unit was enough to travel. Local police were criticized for overreaction and for hyper-vigilance. Greenpeace used that broken protocol as a platform for the message.

Figure 5 was not part of the series as I had intended it. Camouflage was already spent. I doubted further impact from a chaperoned object. On Greenpeace’s intentions the week still succeeded: media was leveraged and a broken system of protocol was exposed. Mystery, not a logo, produced the local effect.

My primary argument to them was that branding an action as Greenpeace worked against them. Putting the figures out as a mystery would gather interest from people and from the nervous system more effectively than a logo. That was the main thing I wanted for them. It worked. Columbia Heights amplified it. I still think the mystery is the better strategy, with or without a technician, and that other nonprofits looking at actions should consider it.

GLOSSARY

The full list of terms is on the glossary page. Words used in this study:

Embed Series. Dressed tape figures placed so they read as people rather than as art.

Virus. A figure that passes as a cell long enough for other cells to stall. It is a virus when it is seen.

Cell. A person in the city.

Camouflage. The clothes and posture that let the figure pass as a cell. A chaperone or a logo spends it.

Flush. Informal removal by a cell who treats the figure as waste.

Hyper T-cell. An official immune response out of scale with the object, here a bomb technician.

Stroke. Clotting that shuts a part of the system: street, Metro, school, businesses.

Nervous system. Media. It carries an encounter from the street to other cells and to the brain.

Brain. City or national government. Here, Congress voting on offshore drilling.

Mystery. The figure found first without a claim. The claim comes after it has been seen.