RANE-Char

RANE-Char is a carbon positive artwork, commissioned and funded by Cape Farewell and the Eden Project in response to climate change.

This project has four distinct aims:
• To interrogate the notion that natural phenomena, by turning substances from one form into another, can be defined as creative acts.
• To raise widespread public awareness of the carbon cycle and the potential threats of catastrophic climate change.
• To influence behaviour by creating an opportunity for the audience to participate in the distribution and sequestration of carbon in the form of biochar.
- To interrogate the boundary of the artwork by incorporating audience participation into its completion., These are achieved through the public burning of harvested wood in controlled conditions, making charcoal through pyrolysis. The resulting charcoal is publicly crushed, bagged, displayed and distributed through the exhibitions and events: Eden Project; Gather (350.org); The Value of Trees (North Devon Biosphere, Barnstaple).

The completion of the artwork happens when members of the public take branded RANE-Char bags to bury the contents near their home address. The site is recorded on a card then returned to the University to be logged on a Google Map. To date RANE-Char has been buried in Australia, Sweden, Denmark, USA, Svalbard and the UK.