July 2023 until October 2024

Unlike conventional flags that symbolically represent countries, organizations, cities, or other entities, climate flags address important global environmental issues concerning our planet's ever-increasing energy and resource consumption and CO2 emissions. 

As an artistic intervention, they not only attract attention to these issues, but generate their own electricity! For this, artist Hans J. Wiegner experiments with an organic photovoltaic foil in combination with transparent color foils. Each flag is unique from hundreds of specral lines in an endless row. For the first time, the light artist does not create energy-consuming objects, but energy-generating naturally luminous solar collages.
 
Three climate flags will be created at Spreepark, feeding energy into the local power grid and making it available on site to RE.USE.UM and for Flamingos at Spreepark. 

Each climate flag is a total of 1.5 meters wide and is composed of five modules of organic photovoltaic foil. In contrast to conventional silicate technology, the photovolatik foil is produced with a low energy input and no rare and toxic raw materials are used. It is fully recyclable and represents a closed material cycle. The pole height of the rotatable stainless steel structure is 6 to 8 meters, depending on the foil length. One climate flag can produce between 250 kWh to 450 kWh annually, depending on its size, and save over 150 kg of CO2. Over an operating period of 20 years, a maximum of 5,000 kWh to 9,000 kWh can be generated and 3 tons of CO2 can be saved.

The climate flags are curated and produced by Susa Pop, Public Art Lab, an internationally active action research platform for urban media art and co-financed by the E.ON Foundation.

https://www.publicartlab-berlin.de/projects/climate-flags/