Client: Oliver Jeffers
In October 2021, USI were asked by Oliver Jeffers and his team to help deliver the installation of his two sculptures at COP26; one large, family accessible outdoor work, The Celestial Census, and one more direct kinetic sculpture, People Live Here. Both pieces point us toward the same request, to zoom out and consider the simple reality that this earth alone in the cosmos is the only place where people can and do live.
Fields of Practice
Resilience
Public Space
Culture
Tourism
Technology
Services
Installation
Visit
oliverjeffers.com/cop26
Situated outdoors in the Green Zone, The Celestial Census encompasses two large sculptures representing the Earth and the Moon, showing an accurate scale of their size and distance from one another in the cosmos. Behind the Earth is the declaration that ‘All the People Live Here’ while across space, all the way to the Moon, we are informed “No One Lives Here (or Anywhere Else!). This installation was painted live at COP 26 by Oliver himself.
A 3m x 3m dark cube with carefully removed sections shows a large globe of our planet rotating silently against the void of the Universe. A bright sunlike spotlight illuminates it. However, as it rotates around to its 'night' the viewer will catch a glimpse of UV light revealing all of the landmasses we humans have staked out on the habitable dry land of this orb. And on closer inspection, rather than revealing the country names we have given each territory, they will simply say, over and over again ‘People Live Here’.
Want to see more? Take a look at the way we’re responding to changes in the way we live, work and play.
Portview Trade Centre
310 Newtownards Rd, Belfast BT4 1HE
studio@urbanscaleinterventions.com
Designed and developed by USI