Songs for the Storm to Come focuses on collective and individual responses to the impending transformations caused by climate change as forecast by environmental scientists, and searches for ways to activate our trust in the possible and to imagine hopeful shared futures. It engages with the urgency of climate change and proposes listening and communal sound-making as strategies to cultivate empathy, foster climate care, prepare for what is to come and activate our capacities for problem-solving. While rejoicing in the transformative power of sound, the project declares that changing the course of global warming is in our hands.
Continuing his practice of collaboration with communities, Karikis worked with members of Manchester based SHE cooperative choir for women and non-binary people, and with sound researchers from the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. The work comprises a central film (11’30”) with sound and a constellation of eight videos shown on monitors. In the central film, the participants observe maps sourced from climate modelling data, showing Britain’s transformed geography for 2050 as a result of rising sea levels. They reflect on the radical social and political changes required, and call for the power to bring us together to form communities in the face of these changes. The group imagine and articulate possible alternatives following the ‘deep listening’ workshop methods of queercomposer Pauline Oliveros, guided by Karikis. They reflect on the book, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World by Brazilian, indigenous movement leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak, and read extracts from the text The Universal Right to Breathe by Cameroonian political thinker, Achille Mbembe. In the process, they build a repository of ideas and hopes, evoking a universe of solutions through a captivating groundswell of spoken word, vocal expression, dissonance and harmony. The participants’ movements in the film are inspired by the concept of ‘social choreography’ and were developed with Brazilian choreographer Maruan Sipert.
For the constellation of eight videos displayed on monitors, Karikis, in collaboration with the university sound researchers, utilised the vibrations of the participants’ voices to move and sculpt different materials such as sand, corn starch and water, through the use of cymatics. Suggestive of displays of rocks and minerals in natural history museums, these cymatics landscapes evoke the potential for collective action to “move mountains”: to resonate with the elements and conjure new shared horizons of hope and possibility.
Project credits:
Artist: Mikhail Karikis
Performers: Hannah Alwan-Weston, Sarah Bond, Freya Ernsting, Mary Hooton, Josey Milner Day, Thulasi Naveenan, Sophie Rawlinson Evans, Esther Routledge, Nell Smith, Rebecca Stacey, Laura Van Hoof + Alicia
Choreographer: Maruan Sipert
Director of Photography: Jamie Quantrill
2nd camera operator: Ian Szloch
Sound recording: Sophie Hewitt
Sound mixing: Sound Force Studio
Sound researchers: Matteo Polato, Neil Bruce
Commissioner: HOME Manchester, UK
