A young man sits in a brightly decorated nursery, sweating profusely as he fiddles with a broken air conditioner. Nearby, an older woman paces in the wreckage of a flooded home, sifting through water-stained insurance statements and broken picture frames. Mannequins with their heads buried in sand represent a literal visual of the common metaphor, depicting the culpability of politicians and businesses in perpetuating climate change.
These scenes are part of a protest art installation called “Danger Season,” designed to raise awareness about the impact of climate change during the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Sponsored by Climate Power and Extreme Weather Survivors, the interactive exhibit aims to protest potential plans by Republicans to reinvest in fossil fuels and undo environmental regulations enacted in the last four years. “We set up the installation here to help people visualize what could be happening, what will be happening, and what is happening in the climate crisis around the world,” said state Sen.
Chris Larson, a Milwaukee Democrat and board member of Climate Power. “Here in Wisconsin, we have had a higher number of thunderstorms, tornado warnings, and mass flooding than normal. So the impacts of this are very real.”
Three blocks from Fiserv Forum, Danger Season occupies six windows in the historic Germania Building.
Creative director Annie Saunders stated that it was “conceived and designed to bring to the doorstep of the RNC something that they are trying to ignore and deny.” The diorama-style rooms, which light up at night, depict scenes of extreme weather damage inspired by testimonies from survivors of natural disasters. The first window shows a child’s nursery, fully decorated in pastel shades, with harsh red light pouring in through a window. The toys, wallpaper, and ceiling fan appear to be melting.
The next two windows connect; a conference room is littered with loose papers and files. At its center, four businessmen sit around a table, their heads buried in a mountain of sand.
Protest art installation during RNC
Adjacent is a room full of filing cabinets that have fallen apart, out of which black, tarry oil spills. In the last two windows, there is a flood-wracked living room with destroyed furniture, art, photos, a damaged TV, and personal items. For the first two days of the RNC, three live actors, who ranged in age from 21 to 58, rotated in 20-minute intervals between the “heat room” and the “flood room,” acting out the real-life struggles of surviving extreme weather events.
The diverse casting was an intentional decision by Saunders and her team to show that extreme weather can “happen to anyone and will happen to everyone.”
Zabdiel Pozos, 21, one of the Milwaukee actors involved in the protest performance, said the flood room hit close to home. Before immigrating to the United States from Nicaragua in 2008, Pozos’ childhood home was flooded during a tropical storm. “It’s a terrifying feeling, you know, seeing your house fill up.
Seeing all your belongings trashed. It’s so sad,” Pozos said. Extreme Weather Survivors co-founder and executive director Sierra Kos said the art aims to “turn pain into power through trauma-informed storytelling.” Kos connected Saunders with survivors of flooding, fires, and heat waves, whose experiences inspired the scenes depicted in the window displays.
The building and putting together of the set occurred in only four days, beginning last Thursday and going live on the convention’s first day Monday. Climate change is “coming for every single one of us. You can’t run from it with your money.
You can’t run from it with your geography. You can’t run from it with your politics,” stated Saunders. “We’re together after all.”
