Headlines about global warming have increasingly moved from newspaper science sections to the front pages, including concerns cited in the lead up to last week's G-8 Summit in Germany and China's recent announcement of its strategy to address climate change.

	The Climate Mash, 2005 Flash animation, 1 minute 23 seconds. "Climate Mash" performed by Bobby "Boris" Pickett Click photo for larger image. Check it out "The Climate Mash," a rewrite of Bobby Pickett's famed "The Monster Mash," animated by Horseback Salad. http://www.climatemash.org/

Timely, then, is "6 BILLION PERPS HELD HOSTAGE! Artists Address Global Warming" at The Andy Warhol Museum. Humor, insight, conviction, finesse and a good dash of feistiness add up to a visually and intellectually engaging exhibition.

While themed shows run the risk of encouraging watered-down material, and a focus on issues courts the didactic, "PERPS" suffers from neither, retaining the saucy attitude of its title through the works presented and in a tabloid-patterned catalog that is both wittily constructed and informative. (Plus, it's environmentally friendly and free!)

The undesignated headliner is Cai Guo-Qiang, whose medium is gunpowder and expression is vast in scale. Cai manages to conflate references to natural disasters and war in objects of beauty that are both abject and mesmerizing, such as his 2006 performance piece "Clear Sky Black Cloud," commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and shown here in DVD documentation.

Cai's DVDs and "gunpowder drawings" alone are worthy of a visit, but the sum of the show's parts suggests a bubbling global nutrient soup of activist expression that's poised to evolve to the next stage. The diversity and breadth of expression included support this notion.

The Yes Men, who target the corporate profits-first mind-set, cheekily penetrated an insurance industry conference held last year at a tony Florida hotel. Dressed in suits and identified as Halliburton representatives, they carried off a presentation of "SurvivalBalls" -- "essentially a gated community for one" -- aided by attendees who modeled the comical unwieldy spheres, two of which are exhibited along with a video of the performance.

Satirist Jay Critchley, inspired by ongoing Cape Cod development, designed the "Martucket Eyeland Resort & Theme Park" to be built in Nantucket Sound and including attractions like the Vanishing Oyster Bar & Grill and SFV Trolley (sports futility vehicle). Be sure to listen to the "Martucket Eyeland Theme Song" -- sung to the tune of "South Pacific's" "Bali Hai" -- which achingly overlays (while drawing for effect upon) the romantic wartime novel/play/movie's losses of innocence with contemporary parallels.

Not everyone, of course, sees such expression in a positive light. The Yes Men were censured by the meeting's host hotel. Critchley displays a Boston Society of Architects Award for "Martucket" next to correspondence from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers informing him that should his filed proposal to build "Martucket" be less than genuine he could face five years in prison and fines to $10,000.

At the show's entry is "The Climate Mash," an animation by Horseback Salad of lyrics written in 2005 by Peter Altman to the tune of Bobby Pickett's 1962 Halloween hit "The Monster Mash." Pickett, who died in April, sings the new version, which includes images of politicos such as President Bush and Vice President Cheney. (See www.climatemash.org.)

Next to it is Preemptive Media's techno-sophisticated "AIR" (Area's Immediate Reading), in which people are invited to carry an air monitoring device to determine the level of pollutants surrounding them. (PM artists Beatriz da Costa, Jamie Schulte and Brooke Singer are Carnegie Mellon University grads.)

Bob Bingham, Carnegie Mellon professor and local "green roofs" champion, asks visitors to "imagine living buildings as living systems" and provides some visionary proposals -- for Carnegie Mellon, the Warhol and the Convention Center -- to get the discussion rolling. He also suggests planting vacant city lots with sunflowers for biofuels.

Steffi Domike, Suzy Meyer and Ann Rosenthal, also regionally based, make complicated food source issues comprehensible through their graphic installation "Food, Carbon & the Commons." A wall component conveys the differences in amount of carbon miles generated when transporting food locally, nationally and internationally. A handout "menu" from a fictitious diner compares such weekly expenditures for common food items -- e.g., grapes from Erie County, 120 miles and 8.81 carbon dioxide pounds per week, vs. from Chile, 3,800 and 326.71.

Trevor Paglen, West Coast new media artist and geography Ph.D. candidate, runs quiet and deep, whether challenging the long-term sustainability of California or citing a geologist's long-range view of this time period as an "Anthropocene age in which humans and their machines are a dominant geologic force." Viewers may interpret his fine, 10-minute gray and white video of lapping water with shore bird sounds as soothing or disconcerting, but the title weighs the balance: "Inland Sea (for that which is still to come) Preliminary Study #1: The Desert."

Also included are sensuous paintings by Hugo Kobayashi and by Pittsburgh native Greg Kwiatek that address current environmental and political climates, the former streamlined and surreal in their crisp evocations of environmental endangerment, the latter brightly colored abstract composites of tormented visages inspired by war and suggested to the artist by shoreline washes of natural materials; 2000 Hugo Boss Prize (Guggenheim) winner Marjetica Potrc's series of drawings suggesting sustainability links between Pittsburgh and Brazil's Amazon Forest, where she frequently works; and the Institute for Figuring's "Crochet Hyperbolic Coral Reef."

Exhibition curator and museum archivist Matt Wrbican has also assembled a range of Andy Warhol's works and archival material, including the "Death and Disaster" paintings and "Endangered Species" prints, a reminder that were Warhol still with us he'd find no paucity of material from which to draw upon.

"PERPS" continues through June 17. For information, call 412-237-8300 or visit www.warhol.org.

Kurtz clarification

SUNY Buffalo professor and Critical Art Ensemble artist Steve Kurtz spoke at the Warhol in March in conjunction with a previous exhibition, but his methodology and his interest in technological/consumer issues that have long-term cultural ramifications would be at home with some of the "PERPS" exhibitors.

When I wrote about his lecture, I attributed to CAE defense committee coordinator Lucia Sommer the comment that no one else was doing the work of the CAE regarding genetic applications. Because Sommer is sensitive to the possibility that other artists working with genetic material may have taken offense at the remark, I'd like to clarify that the comment was intended to apply specifically to CAE work, put on hold because the FBI has retained Kurtz's research material. For story background, go to www.post-gazette.com/pg/07066/767307-42.stm.

The defense fund Web site (www. caedefensefund.org) reports that Kurtz's case may go to trial by next summer, if not before, and is trying to raise $120,000 in anticipated legal and expert witness costs.