Susannah Sayler and Ed Morris have been working at the intersection of art and climate activism for the last fifteen years. They are co-founders of the Canary Project, started in 2006 and inspired by a series of articles that Elizabeth Kolbert published in The New Yorker that eventually became her book Field Notes from a Catastrophe. 

Adapting Kolbert’s investigative strategy, Ed and Susannah initially set out to photograph places around the world being impacted by climate change – in order to call out a warning, as the name Canary Project suggests.  (Though the photographs themselves or the installations that ensued were subsequently renamed History of the Future.)

Since then, Susannah and Ed have worked on numerous projects, from Green Patriot Posters to the more recent Toolshed, and helped coordinate works of fellow artists addressing climate change. They also both teach in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Syracuse University.

As a former student of the arts (more the literary kind than the visual kind, but who’s quibbling), I was curious about the ability of art to serve as a form of climate activism. What can the artist achieve that the scientist and the journalist cannot, I wondered? And, conversely, what are art’s limitations? I figured that Susannah and Ed were uniquely situated to respond to my questions.

Sitting around their dining room table in their new home in Hudson, New York, where they are now collaborating with the collective at Basilica Hudson, we discussed their journey as artists and climate activists, the evolving discourse around climate change and how their strategies of engagement have evolved to keep up with these changes.

Here are images and links to some of the artworks we discuss:

Link to images from their trip to Peru – Susannah tells me about the climate impacts they witnessed there, including the water stress affecting people living in the outskirts of Lima.

Ed talks about the experience of disorientation during their trip to Hohe Tauern in Austria as paradoxically deepening their understanding of climate change – an experience they sought to convey with the photographs that they ended up exhibiting. Below is Glacial, Icecap and Permafrost Melting VIII: Margaritzen Resevoir, Hohe Tauern National Park, Austria 2005, Archival Pigment Print, 40” x 50”

Below is the photograph of the sky above a forest fire exhibited on their dining room wall that we discuss. Drought and Fires X: Umatilla National Forest, Washington State. Sayler/ Morris Archival pigment print, 40” x 50”

Following is the photograph from the Russian scientific station in Antartica that we look at. Glacial, Icecap and Permafrost Melting XXXVI: Bellingshause Base, King George Island, Antarctica. Sayler/ Morris Archival pigment print, 40” x 50”

A link to the poster Golab Waminrg by Mathilde Fallot.

Below is the poster Washington Monument by Jon Santos from Green Patriot Posters.

Here is a link to a website on the High Water Line project by Eve Mosher. And, finally, here is a link to Toolshed, Susannah and Ed’s latest project.