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CLIMATE  MIGRATION  -  CULTURAL MOBILITY

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Photography by Ursula Beimann, from her film "Deep Weather".  A Bangladeshi community manually builds a barrier to protect their homes with sandbags.

BRING  YOUR  VOICE  TO  THE  REALITY  OF  THE  FUTURE   -   OPEN  CALL  MARCH  2023

BRING  YOUR  VOICE  TO  THE  REALITY  OF  THE  FUTURE    -   OPEN  CALL  MARCH  2023

Tea Roots brings the community together to center around a new discourse on transition.  UN Secretary General Guterres coined the term "Human Mobility" to refer to an estimated 21 million people who will be displaced by weather.  With a steady increase, 1 billion people are expected to migrate, in the coming years.

Tea Roots coined the phrase "Cultural Mobility" to distinguish a broadened perspective of displacement: one that acknowledges that when people are displaced due to Climate Change, it may apply to an entire people, forever.  Therefore, the perspective of “mobility” applies not only to the "human" but to an entire culture and many times, the movement of an entire civilization.

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The socio-cultural impact from the movement of 15% of the world's population, has yet to be fathomed. Yet, we begin by the empowerment of visual and literary artists to express a local and diverse voice for our future, informing impending strategies of transition and accommodation.

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The Issue at Hand 
In the coming years, Climate Migration will be at the forefront of cultural change in a manner that has yet to be addressed, reshaping our communities and cultures.  For example, due to climate influences alone, one (1) in twelve (12) Americans, in the southern half of the USA, are expected to move to California or the West. 

 

California has been particularly hard hit by fires, which disrupted thousands of families.  In the future, it's anticipated that at least 28 million Americans are expected to eventually face megafires (the size of Manhattan).  With these impending expectations of Climate Change, the United Nations anticipates that hundreds of millions of the world's population will migrate, in our lifetime.

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Photography by David T. Pang from the "Healing After Wildfire" series.

Art, Word & Culture in Events 2023
This is a historic and unprecedented expectation that Tea Roots plans to address through a one-week exhibition to open the discourse and bring unheard voices in a uniquely, artistic manner.  Marginalized populations, people of color, elders, and children are disproportionately impacted by migration; and, the expanse of cultural impact has yet to be assessed.

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The exhibition, Climate Migration - Cultural Mobility (CMCM) will take place Summer 2023 and will include: a visual art installation, live poetry showcases, opening and closing galas with music, performance art, and an artist-community exchange.  

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Tea Roots’ primary aim is to bring public attention to the urgency and impending changes in our landscape that will include climate migrants from the Southwest, the Southern states, within California, and the impacted countries.  The Open Call will be announced this May.

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The above photograph is from Ursula Beimann's film essay "Acoustic Ocean," where she addresses the ocean as a semiotic ecosphere.

 

In addition to being a world renown artist and scholar, Beimann is an indigenous Sámi woman, a marine biologist, a diver, and marine acoustician. This is one of her two film installations that will be exhibited.

Deeper Perspectives on Local Climate Migration

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The world community watches closely as California has been besieged by epic flooding and reclaiming of coastlines.  With the State having already absorbed 50% of the nation's homeless, gentrification further causes displacement of residents in stepping-stone directions, away from beehives of many urban centers, like San Francisco. 

 

The migration continues inland and eastward to the City of Oakland, then to suburban cities like Concord, Pittsburgh, and Tracy.  Finally, people are migrating to the Central Valley's semi-desert, surrounded by the snow-capped Sierra Nevada Mountains. Gentrification has affected low-income BIPOC migration to locations beyond the exurbs, far away from the urban cultural/gender institutions that supported them.

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Changing seashores will push people inland, whereas climate temperatures will continue to climb. The Central Valley will trend towards a Death Valley-like desert, only to be vulnerable to mega floods, similar to the Great Flood of 1862, affecting Oregon, Nevada, and California. Adam B. Smith, a NOAA researcher, has written that disasters "are becoming the new normal.” -- David T. Pang, CEO

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To hear more from David Pang on the origins and journeys in development of the Healing After Wildfire series and the CMCM exhibition, check back for the "Zen and Art of Healing After Fire".

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For more information:

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Email: info@TeaRoots.org

Tel: (415) 863-9603

RELATED LINKS

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New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States

https://projects.propublica.org/climate-migration/

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Future of the Human Climate Niche

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1910114117

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Racist Housing Practices From The 1930s Linked To Hotter Neighborhoods Today

https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/795961381/racist-housing-practices-from-the-1930s-linked-to-hotter-neighborhoods-today

 

Seventy Two Hours Under the Heat Dome

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/18/seventy-two-hours-under-the-heat-dome

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