so I want to start with two questions
how do you connect to the wild and when
do you connect to the wild my
relationship with the wild began as a
child with something as simple as a
smile the smile that you see on my face
right now is not the one that I had as a
kid
where you see incisors I once had fangs
so this led me to believe I was a bat I
would run about the house with a cape
tied to my neck in my hands pretending I
could fly I’m sorry to say that never
took off one of the many disappointments
of childhood things that you learn your
limitations few years later I remember
reading this article about fruit bats
and a large number of them are being
consumed in by the thousands in Guam and
being shipped from the Pacific Islands
to Guam this is a commercial outfit to
think that somebody would want to
consume something that I had been not
too long ago was kind of shocking and it
really did not resonate with me and I
figured I needed to do something about
that at some point in my life but I
didn’t think to start then which I
should haven’t and I’m always amazed by
people who start early because it’s
never too early to start if you’re
reacting to something do something right
then and there don’t wait for tomorrow
don’t wait for another day don’t wait to
become something you’re already
everything you need to be to act anyhow
so I going forward eventually I found my
way back into conservation which I’m
really grateful for and I wound up
dealing with numerous species through
numerous nonprofit outfits for me wild
as an implicit part of who I am and how
I function daily it is part of our
biological and evolutionary development
it is a part of our lineage it’s where
we come from
it is our past it is in our present and
should jolly we’ll be a part of our
future and that is why I do what I do
because it is so important to me to
evoke this connection that I feel on a
cellular level in every individual I
encounter every day it led me to dealing
with ivory and
horn and all of last year went by just
tackling this one issue and try and tell
the same story over and over again in as
many ways as possible
these were campaigns elephant voices
Joyce booze organization dealing with
poaching in Kenya so this particular
campaign was supposed to cast a light on
what’s happening with the Chinese
consumer market being the largest
stakeholder in this game it is a numbers
game it is about tipping points money
and time and time is running out at the
cost of these animals so this particular
campaign shows these two Chinese
characters with spells China in Chinese
the song GU and beneath that I’ve
written stopped the trade every toss
course the life this got Joyce thrown
out of a TCM conference traditional
Chinese medicine conference and she
called me panicked Bing
oh my gosh I can’t believe it had such a
huge cry I’ll cry that I had to be
basically evicted from the premises and
she said I don’t know whether this was a
good thing but after a lot of debate we
realized it was a good thing because
shortly after we started getting emails
with images like this this was the less
shocking image I got emails with people
who had tattooed this onto their backs
and arms I was surprised that a single
artwork that I’d created could have such
deep impact on people’s lives that they
felt like it could extend their voice
and empower who they were and what they
stood for in the world so we started
running these campaigns as open source
anybody could print them out and use
them any which way they felt was
appropriate to get the story out there
there were demonstrations completely
decentralized organized by students
schools and nonprofits around the world
all carrying banners there were banners
hanging outside people’s houses as
bumper stickers and cars I would get
images daily sent in and it was really
quite lovely to see that these images
could really have such a strong reach
across the world which led me to finding
ways to communicate the same story and
as many media as possible as well as to
tell every angle of the story so this is
to cast a light on the terror attacks
and the trade in firearms because
illicit contraband does contribute to
that
it’s also important to educate the
Chinese demographic about how each task
or rhino horn costs a life it does
result in debt most Chinese people
believe that the elephant tusk is like a
tooth it just falls out and it’s picked
up by somebody and delivered to the
marketplace so I need to show this in a
way in places where loads of ice would
have access to these images we ran these
on mass transport systems in China as
well as on consumer magazines in
partnership with WildAid African
Wildlife Foundation and save our
elephants because we weren’t a target
people who had the purchasing power who
could have immediate impact and what was
happening on the field because when you
kill the demand when you can stop the
buying it stops the killing it’s not
just important to educate people about
what’s happening but also to cast light
on on cultural consciousness and shift
perspectives that are held from for
extended periods of time and get those
people to extend the empathy that they
feel toward one thing toward yet other
things so moving from the known to the
unknown so these two campaigns which
were run across China in the similar
format and one mass transport as well as
on billboards and magazines were to help
the Chinese extend this pride that they
feel in the conservation success that
they’ve achieved with pandas in China to
African wildlife hence the pandas of
Africa it was run in a vocabulary they
understood and it went viral in China
which was a tremendous success because
it was tweeted on on Weibo and an old
local social media the Chinese adopted
it as their own message because it was
not targeting them and singling them out
instead it was telling them you’ve done
something well extend that positive
attitude towards something else for me
I’m haunted by this crisis I my dating
life is kind of ruined by it because
frankly when I go out on a date with a
stranger I’m thinking all the while
about one that’s lost every 15 minutes
so by the time you get to dessert I’m
like is this guy worth 6 elephants and
when when you’re weighing at art like
that it’s very hard to sit through that
evening it also ends up affecting me
during my sleep cycle it ruins my REM
cycle continually or sometimes I
actually end up strategizing solutions
and taking notes while
sleep with an iPhone by my bed or a
notebook because I never know when a
sketch is going to occur to me not to
mention bathroom because if I wake up in
the middle of the night and this was one
particular situation is a sequence that
actually unfolded one evening so I woke
up at 3:00 in the morning went to the
loo sat down and as I’m being I’m like
looking out the door and I see a tile on
the floor tree rings in this wooden tile
and I’m immediately thinking about
geological time and about the giant
sequoia that I first encountered as a
child in the British Natural History
Museum about how these species and
compare our stories and assimilate us in
such a profound way this particular
Sequoia rings is started out its life
and 5:57 and from there moving forward
it is assimilated the rise of Islam the
spread of Christianity it has seen so
much down to the birth and death of
Gandhi you know and when we cut a tree
like that down we’re cutting this huge
part of our history down so when a
species goes extinct it’s not just about
that one individual or species that’s
gone off our radar but about the fact
that this huge part of our story is just
gone missing and that is such a terrible
loss to me so immediately got to the
desk didn’t go back to bed
so I’m sketching out a rhino juxtaposing
the stree ring into it and then trying
to find ways in which I can show how
time is elapsing for the species so the
primary horn became a santim of but a
blood timer so every drop that falls is
adding to that narrative of loss and the
secondary horn is a metronome with a
ak-47 going back and forth keeping count
the eye of the Rhino has a clock that
reads the second before midnight because
if you compress geological time into 24
hours we came on to this planet a second
before midnight and we’ve had this meant
amount of impact changed the face of
this planet within that second so how do
I extend the same narrative onto yet
other ideas and so this was about
elephants hens burning off the ivory the
stockpiles thinking about how that
connects to China so incense clocks were
what they used back in the day so
burning of incense and then thinking
about how the target swings back and
forth just waiting for them to be called
down moving that forward how can we roll
this into a solution it’s about
having a rise in our energy
consciousness not just moving to new
energy economies but also finding this
deeper spiritual connection to nature to
see if we have the capacity to rewilding
disconnected despite living in the
cities that we live in if there is an
honest way in which we understand that
the Rhino is a part of who we are that
the elephant is a part of who we are and
we cannot live without them in this
world with us this particular campaign I
ran in New York to raise funding it was
crowd-sourced so every time a donor
contributed to this particular campaign
I would replace the graphically
Illustrated hand with an actual human
hand when he finished raising funding I
had all the human hands out there and
this is the power of us coming together
all of this resulted in me getting a
billboard up in Times Square on Broadway
between 46 and 47 in partnership with
loud sauce and March for Elephants for a
month
it ran 24/7 and I’m gonna play the spot
for you
the acoustic scape for this particular
animation was acquired from elephant
listening project Katie Payne’s work
this was an actual recording of a
poaching incident in Gabon so you hear
the shots being fired in the beginning
the elephant’s groaning for coming to
those shots and then you hear the
poachers hacking into their faces and
the sound of that
that’s the ax hitting against the bone
and also the tusks and you hear them
groaning even after that’s because
they’re live and conscious for this you
actually see elephant’s in Africa
stumbling about with completely caved in
faces because they’ve eaten in with an
axe and it’s still alive so you have to
wait for that elephant to fall before
you can even handle what’s happening
with it so it’s a pretty grisly trade
it’s really brutal and bloody oh by the
way that particular campaign got over
1.5 million views that’s 1.5 million
eyes that will reach Minds that were
reached and hopefully changed in some
way by that campaign I did have a lot of
people come up to me and asked me what
ivory was which was a little shocking so
it’s the world we live in so the need to
educate I cannot underscore that enough
if you know transmit that knowledge it
has to happen now use social media I
mean taking a selfie is not just about
about like who we are today but who we
are has that power
you know you becoming that selfie means
that you have a stand in this world you
have a place in this world and therefore
you need to speak up through it use
yourself as a vessel moving forward is
much about the the megafauna that is
going extinct because of our actions
it’s also the habitat loss that’s
resulting in compromised living
situation for all of these incredible
animals so this particular campaign who
is illustrated in charcoal because the
charcoal trade I don’t know how many of
you know about this is pre rampant in
African countries they fell over four
hundred thousand acres in just Tanzania
to produce charcoal because it’s the
main energy source for most Tanzanian
households that’s how they light their
stoves because most Tanzanian households
the majority of the population lives
off-grid but this basically results in
loss of habitat for
the African wildlife cheetahs that are
basically disintegrating before our very
own eyes and these animals need a lot of
space they need the acres to survive I
was also in the sound Gary recently
working with frankfurt zoological
society very closely i got the
opportunity to talk to poachers former
poachers and also installed this mural
in the frankfurt office and sarin era
the mural actually speaks to how i embed
data into a particular artwork because
the composition is not just about
creating something beautiful but about
how how much information I can embed in
a given layout in this particular case I
wanted to show the Serengeti highway
coming up I wanted to cast a light on
demographic momentum in the upcoming
years because if you if you look at the
skyline that I had Ellis trated you can
actually see from 12 million of the
population when it picks that Empire
State is going to be a 200 million just
in Tanzania where is this population
going to go and how is infrastructure
going to develop in the coming years and
how we’re going to stop the wild from
getting infringed Frank fenced in and
fragmented like it has everywhere else
in the world so these are the questions
I wake up to every day and the reason
why I do campaign after campaign image
after image day in and day out is
because I want to change the one thing
that I know will have the most impact in
the world around me and that’s you thank
you
you
how do you connect to the wild and when
do you connect to the wild my
relationship with the wild began as a
child with something as simple as a
smile the smile that you see on my face
right now is not the one that I had as a
kid
where you see incisors I once had fangs
so this led me to believe I was a bat I
would run about the house with a cape
tied to my neck in my hands pretending I
could fly I’m sorry to say that never
took off one of the many disappointments
of childhood things that you learn your
limitations few years later I remember
reading this article about fruit bats
and a large number of them are being
consumed in by the thousands in Guam and
being shipped from the Pacific Islands
to Guam this is a commercial outfit to
think that somebody would want to
consume something that I had been not
too long ago was kind of shocking and it
really did not resonate with me and I
figured I needed to do something about
that at some point in my life but I
didn’t think to start then which I
should haven’t and I’m always amazed by
people who start early because it’s
never too early to start if you’re
reacting to something do something right
then and there don’t wait for tomorrow
don’t wait for another day don’t wait to
become something you’re already
everything you need to be to act anyhow
so I going forward eventually I found my
way back into conservation which I’m
really grateful for and I wound up
dealing with numerous species through
numerous nonprofit outfits for me wild
as an implicit part of who I am and how
I function daily it is part of our
biological and evolutionary development
it is a part of our lineage it’s where
we come from
it is our past it is in our present and
should jolly we’ll be a part of our
future and that is why I do what I do
because it is so important to me to
evoke this connection that I feel on a
cellular level in every individual I
encounter every day it led me to dealing
with ivory and
horn and all of last year went by just
tackling this one issue and try and tell
the same story over and over again in as
many ways as possible
these were campaigns elephant voices
Joyce booze organization dealing with
poaching in Kenya so this particular
campaign was supposed to cast a light on
what’s happening with the Chinese
consumer market being the largest
stakeholder in this game it is a numbers
game it is about tipping points money
and time and time is running out at the
cost of these animals so this particular
campaign shows these two Chinese
characters with spells China in Chinese
the song GU and beneath that I’ve
written stopped the trade every toss
course the life this got Joyce thrown
out of a TCM conference traditional
Chinese medicine conference and she
called me panicked Bing
oh my gosh I can’t believe it had such a
huge cry I’ll cry that I had to be
basically evicted from the premises and
she said I don’t know whether this was a
good thing but after a lot of debate we
realized it was a good thing because
shortly after we started getting emails
with images like this this was the less
shocking image I got emails with people
who had tattooed this onto their backs
and arms I was surprised that a single
artwork that I’d created could have such
deep impact on people’s lives that they
felt like it could extend their voice
and empower who they were and what they
stood for in the world so we started
running these campaigns as open source
anybody could print them out and use
them any which way they felt was
appropriate to get the story out there
there were demonstrations completely
decentralized organized by students
schools and nonprofits around the world
all carrying banners there were banners
hanging outside people’s houses as
bumper stickers and cars I would get
images daily sent in and it was really
quite lovely to see that these images
could really have such a strong reach
across the world which led me to finding
ways to communicate the same story and
as many media as possible as well as to
tell every angle of the story so this is
to cast a light on the terror attacks
and the trade in firearms because
illicit contraband does contribute to
that
it’s also important to educate the
Chinese demographic about how each task
or rhino horn costs a life it does
result in debt most Chinese people
believe that the elephant tusk is like a
tooth it just falls out and it’s picked
up by somebody and delivered to the
marketplace so I need to show this in a
way in places where loads of ice would
have access to these images we ran these
on mass transport systems in China as
well as on consumer magazines in
partnership with WildAid African
Wildlife Foundation and save our
elephants because we weren’t a target
people who had the purchasing power who
could have immediate impact and what was
happening on the field because when you
kill the demand when you can stop the
buying it stops the killing it’s not
just important to educate people about
what’s happening but also to cast light
on on cultural consciousness and shift
perspectives that are held from for
extended periods of time and get those
people to extend the empathy that they
feel toward one thing toward yet other
things so moving from the known to the
unknown so these two campaigns which
were run across China in the similar
format and one mass transport as well as
on billboards and magazines were to help
the Chinese extend this pride that they
feel in the conservation success that
they’ve achieved with pandas in China to
African wildlife hence the pandas of
Africa it was run in a vocabulary they
understood and it went viral in China
which was a tremendous success because
it was tweeted on on Weibo and an old
local social media the Chinese adopted
it as their own message because it was
not targeting them and singling them out
instead it was telling them you’ve done
something well extend that positive
attitude towards something else for me
I’m haunted by this crisis I my dating
life is kind of ruined by it because
frankly when I go out on a date with a
stranger I’m thinking all the while
about one that’s lost every 15 minutes
so by the time you get to dessert I’m
like is this guy worth 6 elephants and
when when you’re weighing at art like
that it’s very hard to sit through that
evening it also ends up affecting me
during my sleep cycle it ruins my REM
cycle continually or sometimes I
actually end up strategizing solutions
and taking notes while
sleep with an iPhone by my bed or a
notebook because I never know when a
sketch is going to occur to me not to
mention bathroom because if I wake up in
the middle of the night and this was one
particular situation is a sequence that
actually unfolded one evening so I woke
up at 3:00 in the morning went to the
loo sat down and as I’m being I’m like
looking out the door and I see a tile on
the floor tree rings in this wooden tile
and I’m immediately thinking about
geological time and about the giant
sequoia that I first encountered as a
child in the British Natural History
Museum about how these species and
compare our stories and assimilate us in
such a profound way this particular
Sequoia rings is started out its life
and 5:57 and from there moving forward
it is assimilated the rise of Islam the
spread of Christianity it has seen so
much down to the birth and death of
Gandhi you know and when we cut a tree
like that down we’re cutting this huge
part of our history down so when a
species goes extinct it’s not just about
that one individual or species that’s
gone off our radar but about the fact
that this huge part of our story is just
gone missing and that is such a terrible
loss to me so immediately got to the
desk didn’t go back to bed
so I’m sketching out a rhino juxtaposing
the stree ring into it and then trying
to find ways in which I can show how
time is elapsing for the species so the
primary horn became a santim of but a
blood timer so every drop that falls is
adding to that narrative of loss and the
secondary horn is a metronome with a
ak-47 going back and forth keeping count
the eye of the Rhino has a clock that
reads the second before midnight because
if you compress geological time into 24
hours we came on to this planet a second
before midnight and we’ve had this meant
amount of impact changed the face of
this planet within that second so how do
I extend the same narrative onto yet
other ideas and so this was about
elephants hens burning off the ivory the
stockpiles thinking about how that
connects to China so incense clocks were
what they used back in the day so
burning of incense and then thinking
about how the target swings back and
forth just waiting for them to be called
down moving that forward how can we roll
this into a solution it’s about
having a rise in our energy
consciousness not just moving to new
energy economies but also finding this
deeper spiritual connection to nature to
see if we have the capacity to rewilding
disconnected despite living in the
cities that we live in if there is an
honest way in which we understand that
the Rhino is a part of who we are that
the elephant is a part of who we are and
we cannot live without them in this
world with us this particular campaign I
ran in New York to raise funding it was
crowd-sourced so every time a donor
contributed to this particular campaign
I would replace the graphically
Illustrated hand with an actual human
hand when he finished raising funding I
had all the human hands out there and
this is the power of us coming together
all of this resulted in me getting a
billboard up in Times Square on Broadway
between 46 and 47 in partnership with
loud sauce and March for Elephants for a
month
it ran 24/7 and I’m gonna play the spot
for you
the acoustic scape for this particular
animation was acquired from elephant
listening project Katie Payne’s work
this was an actual recording of a
poaching incident in Gabon so you hear
the shots being fired in the beginning
the elephant’s groaning for coming to
those shots and then you hear the
poachers hacking into their faces and
the sound of that
that’s the ax hitting against the bone
and also the tusks and you hear them
groaning even after that’s because
they’re live and conscious for this you
actually see elephant’s in Africa
stumbling about with completely caved in
faces because they’ve eaten in with an
axe and it’s still alive so you have to
wait for that elephant to fall before
you can even handle what’s happening
with it so it’s a pretty grisly trade
it’s really brutal and bloody oh by the
way that particular campaign got over
1.5 million views that’s 1.5 million
eyes that will reach Minds that were
reached and hopefully changed in some
way by that campaign I did have a lot of
people come up to me and asked me what
ivory was which was a little shocking so
it’s the world we live in so the need to
educate I cannot underscore that enough
if you know transmit that knowledge it
has to happen now use social media I
mean taking a selfie is not just about
about like who we are today but who we
are has that power
you know you becoming that selfie means
that you have a stand in this world you
have a place in this world and therefore
you need to speak up through it use
yourself as a vessel moving forward is
much about the the megafauna that is
going extinct because of our actions
it’s also the habitat loss that’s
resulting in compromised living
situation for all of these incredible
animals so this particular campaign who
is illustrated in charcoal because the
charcoal trade I don’t know how many of
you know about this is pre rampant in
African countries they fell over four
hundred thousand acres in just Tanzania
to produce charcoal because it’s the
main energy source for most Tanzanian
households that’s how they light their
stoves because most Tanzanian households
the majority of the population lives
off-grid but this basically results in
loss of habitat for
the African wildlife cheetahs that are
basically disintegrating before our very
own eyes and these animals need a lot of
space they need the acres to survive I
was also in the sound Gary recently
working with frankfurt zoological
society very closely i got the
opportunity to talk to poachers former
poachers and also installed this mural
in the frankfurt office and sarin era
the mural actually speaks to how i embed
data into a particular artwork because
the composition is not just about
creating something beautiful but about
how how much information I can embed in
a given layout in this particular case I
wanted to show the Serengeti highway
coming up I wanted to cast a light on
demographic momentum in the upcoming
years because if you if you look at the
skyline that I had Ellis trated you can
actually see from 12 million of the
population when it picks that Empire
State is going to be a 200 million just
in Tanzania where is this population
going to go and how is infrastructure
going to develop in the coming years and
how we’re going to stop the wild from
getting infringed Frank fenced in and
fragmented like it has everywhere else
in the world so these are the questions
I wake up to every day and the reason
why I do campaign after campaign image
after image day in and day out is
because I want to change the one thing
that I know will have the most impact in
the world around me and that’s you thank
you
you
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