Offset: Boiler Room

Headsets, computer monitors and a dashboard with sales statistics. From the appearance of it, this is a call center. But unlike a call center that inundates you with insurance policy offers or phone contracts, this one sells new kinds of carbon offsets that turn capitalist logic on its head.

In this hybrid installation developed by artists Tega Brain and Sam Lavigne, the roles are reversed. You become the salesperson, and your clients are corporate heads of high-emission companies. Your goal is to sell them offsets generated through “Industrial Sabotage as Temporary Carbon Storage,” a methodology that calculates carbon credits from direct action.

Offset: Boiler Room offers a critical look at existing carbon compensation schemes and is part of the Offset series, through which the artists envision a compensation market radically different from the current one. 100% of the revenue from the successful sales will be donated to relevant activist organizations.