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Oxfam's giant heads of world leaders arrive for G8
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The Canadian Press
Date: Monday Jun. 14, 2010 1:56 PM ET
TORONTO — Barack Obama's head has arrived in Canada ahead of the G8 and G20 summits -- minus part of his ear.
The giant papier mache likeness of the U.S. president's noggin and the heads of the seven other G8 leaders were unpacked at Oxfam's Toronto offices Monday after being shipped from Germany, where they appeared at UN climate change talks.
Oxfam uses the props for publicity stunts during international meetings, such as the upcoming G8 in Huntsville, Ont., from June 25-26 and the G20 in Toronto from June 26-27.
The heads made the journey largely intact, except for a chip missing from the top of Obama's ear.
The ear should be easy enough to fix, but Oxfam's biggest concern now is getting a new head made for Japan's leader in time for a stunt on June 25 in Huntsville for the G8 summit.
"Normally they take about a month (to make), so this is a rush job," said Frida Eklund, Oxfam's popular mobilization lead.
"We didn't really plan for him to step down just before the summits."
Toronto artist Ted Heeley has offered to make a giant head of Naoto Kan, who replaced Yukio Hatoyama as Japan's prime minister less than two weeks ago.
The group had been thinking they wouldn't have the heads make the trek from Toronto to Huntsville, but are now planning an appearance or two at the G8.
The heads, lined up on a boardroom table after the bubble-wrap was taken off, are very close likenesses to their real-life counterparts. The artist -- Dot Young in the United Kingdom makes most of them -- will select a few different photos of the leaders and Oxfam staff pick ones they feel are most representative of the leaders.
They try to pick a good range of expressions, Eklund said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper's head has a detached stare and icy blue eyes, while Obama's has a jovial smile.
Volunteers -- mostly Oxfam policy experts and executive directors -- will don the heads and pose in mock photo-ops.
"What they try to do is put them in a scene that's basically a satirical comment on what's happening or what should be happening," said Oxfam Canada spokeswoman Karen Palmer.
At the G8 last year in L'Aquila, the G8 leaders were "sitting down to a rather decadent dinner on the eve of a discussion about food insecurity," Palmer said.
So staffers there had the big heads sit down to giant bowls of pasta made out of metres and metres electrical cord.
They also opened the summit with a "while Rome burns" scene, complete with fire blowers, a comment on how out-of-touch the G8 can seem, Palmer said.
Strapped on to their heads with a hard hat mounted inside, the props are a bit wobbly, weighing seven kilograms each. There are no eye holes, so except for the Angela Merkel head -- whose mouth is open -- the volunteers can see through little holes designed to look like stubble.
It means limited vision and no peripheral vision, so the volunteers will be under close watch by a "stunt director."
They wouldn't want to trip and break a giant nose.
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