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

The overall project focuses on collective and individual responses to the impending transformations as forecast by climate change scientists, and searches for ways to activate our trust in the possible and to imagine hopeful shared futures. 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. In Songs for the Storm to Come, the choir members 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.

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.

The project 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.

Credits: 

Artist: Mikhail Karikis

Director of Photography: Jamie Quantrill

Sound researchers: Matteo Polato, Neil Bruce

For The Last Concert (2023) Mikhail Karikis collaborated with seventy teenage musicians in Japan to celebrate the life and architecture of former Omiya Civic Hall and to honour the natural forces that brought its end and possess it in the absence of human occupation.

The former Omiya Civic Hall in the Japanese city of Saitama was completed in 1970 and was distinguished for its modernist architectural detail, use of concrete, wood, transparency and acoustic design. For half a century, the concert hall and theatre reverberated with music and echoed the sounds of cultural and civic life. The Hall was popular among citizens and marked their lives as it served as a stage for special personal and social occasions, graduations, concerts and celebrations. However, the once lively Civic Hall fell into silence in March 2022 due to renewed earthquake building regulations that ruled it unfit for use. Its subsequent closure was an event that resonated in the lives of locals and was a reminder of the immensity of natural forces and the earth’s energy in Japan, the world’s most seismically active country, quivering to the vibrations of more than 1,500 earthquakes annually. In this film, stage curtains transform into torrents of water, wind instruments replicate the sounds of a storm, while voices sing the sounds of wind. Through the sounds of convivial chatter or performing fragments of classical and contemporary music mimicking sounds of meteorology and natural phenomena, we witness architecture, lights, microphones, music instruments and the voices of young people joining forces and bringing the Civic Hall to life for one last time.

Commissioned by Saitama Triennale 2023

HD video, colour, stereo sound, 12′ 15″

Commissioned by Saitama Triennale 2023

Sourced from climate science websites, a video navigates over maps of different parts of the world (the maps are relevant to each location where the work is exhibited) showing the extent of flooding and land-loss different areas will suffer this century in a +2C and a +4C scenario. A soundtrack created in collaboration with the Liverpool Socialist Singers accompanies the maps; it imagines the sonorities of consecutive rising sea waves and references the waves of human noise created in eco-protests that Karikis recorded over the years. A two-channel video presents a transcript of an imagined conversation between two young people in 2080. They ask what brings humans together and reflect on the instinct to sustain and love all life, and our responsibility toward future generations. This conversation was developed in collaboration with 20-year-old students from Birmingham School of Art using instructional music scores by the queer musicologist and composer Pauline Oliveros.

Taking the form of a four-channel video installation with surround sound, The Weather Orchestra is an ode to the elements, expressing both our deep relationship and entanglement with the weather and celebrating our connection to the atmosphere and the earth.

In this installation the gallery space transforms into an indoor weather system generated through sound vibration and singing. Three projections feature musicians performing instruments and analogue noise machines designed to imitate the sounds of natural phenomena. A Baroque wind machine, Latin American ceremonial rain sticks, an ocean drum, a water-phone, a thunder-tube and metal thunder-sheets fill the space with a meteorological music and allude to the forces and magnificence of nature. In the middle of this soundscape and swept up by the noise, human voices burst in folk songs expressing joy, fear and wonder toward all elements surrounding us.

The Weather Orchestra is part of Karikis’s project Acoustics of Resistance – a project comprising of works that collectively tune into the sonorities of socio-political change and ecology. It rejoices in the transformative power of listening and sound-making while declaring that changing the course of climate change is in our hands.

It has been created in collaboration with performers from mainland Portugal, Madeira, Syria and Denmark, and continues to expand through the research of musical instruments imitating meteorological sounds and folk songs in different cultural contexts.

In this installation the gallery space transforms into an indoor weather system generated through sound vibration and singing. Three projections feature musicians performing instruments and analogue noise machines designed to imitate the sounds of natural phenomena. A Baroque wind machine, Latin American ceremonial rain sticks, an ocean drum, a water-phone, a thunder-tube and metal thunder-sheets fill the space with a meteorological music and allude to the forces and magnificence of nature. In the middle of this soundscape and swept up by the noise, human voices burst in folk songs expressing joy, fear and wonder toward all elements surrounding us.

The Weather Orchestra is part of Karikis’s project Acoustics of Resistance – a project comprising of works that collectively tune into the sonorities of socio-political change and ecology. It rejoices in the transformative power of listening and sound-making while declaring that changing the course of climate change is in our hands.

It has been created in collaboration with performers from mainland Portugal, Madeira, Syria and Denmark, and continues to expand through the research of musical instruments imitating meteorological sounds and folk songs in different cultural contexts.

Performers: Mariana Camacho, Salman Duski, Helena Espeval, Joana Guerra, Maria do Mar, João Neves, Helene Tungelund

Sound Recording: Raquel Castro, Mikhail Karikis, Margaryta Kulichova

Camera: Mikhail Karikis, Uriel Orlow

Costumes: Silvo Design

5.1 Sound Mix: Hugo Leitão

Created with the support of Lisboa Soa Portugal, Onassis Stegi Foundation Greece, SPOR Festival Denmark, MIMA School of Art & Creative Industries UK, The Common Guild Scotland

Special Thanks: Raquel Castro and the entire Lisboa Soa team, Fernando Belo at Carpintarias de São Lazaro, Centro Cultural Malaposta, Diana Policarpo.