TOUCH THE WORLD
A Call to Action for Environmental and Social Change
Yaniv Janson
Yaniv Janson
"Touch the World" is an initiative seeking to educate communities around environmental and social sustainability while empowering them to become confident in themselves and responsible stewards of the Earth.
Yaniv Janson is passionate about social and environmental sustainability, and using art to inspire action towards a better world-- he calls it "ART-ivism".
In 2017 he launched his “Please Do Touch” exhibition in Paris, partnering with the UNESCO Memory of the Future project, and went on to present at a solo exhibition at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York. The exhibition reflects upon the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Yaniv imagined what the world will look like if we achieve the goals,— and conversely, if we do not.
Science alone does not bear the key to address the climate crisis—we can only do so as a collective, and we need everyone on board. To this purpose, not only must people become aware of the crisis, but become invested in it-- realising how it could affect them and the people, places and life they love. The power of art in connecting people and evoking emotions, and it is as powerful a tool in combating climate change as any.
Yaniv's aspiration is to spread the word through multiple channels to generate reactions strong enough to change behavoiurs. This will be done by using education and visual language to pose questions with an emotional impact: what will cities and landscapes look like if we continue on this unchanged path? Some areas will be much colder, in others, temperatures will rise with terrifying consequences for all. It is time to illustrate with images what our world will suffer and what the impact on people will be-- before it is too late to revert!
When it comes to humanity's voice, Art and Activism go hand in hand - it's called Art-ivism - and it concerns all of us. Maya Zilberberg created the animation above for our first project.