Songs for the Storm to Come

By Mikhail Karikis

Part of: Christmas at HOME 2024

Songs for the Storm to Come is an immersive sound and multi-screen video installation, by award winning, internationally renowned Greek/British artist, Mikhail Karikis. It focuses on collective and individual responses to the impending transformations of the UK, as forecast by climate change scientists. Powerfully evocative, the work searches for ways to activate 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.

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The group imagine and articulate possible alternatives following the ‘deep listening’ workshop methods of queer composer 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 and harmony. The participants’ movements in the film are inspired by the concept of ‘social choreography’ and were developed with Brazilian choreographer Maruan Sipert.

To create the videos displayed on LCD screens, Karikis, in collaboration with the university sound researchers, utilized 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 communal action, to resonate with the elements and conjure new shared horizons.

Songs for the Storm to Come 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 the possible. While rejoicing in the transformative power of sound, it declares that changing the course of global warming is in our hands.

Clarissa Corfe, Creative Producer: Visual Art said “We’re thrilled to be working with Mikhail Karikis on Songs for the Storm to Come. He is known for his exceptional skill in collaborating with people in many places around the world. I first experienced his work about 10 years ago – strongly evocative, it stayed with me, and we strongly felt his work would resonate with HOME’s audiences.

As the curator on this project I’ve been fortunate to have produced and closely witnessed this project unfold – and the workshops with the Manchester based SHE cooperative choir for women and non-binary people. Inspired by the workshop methods of Pauline Oliveros and guided by Mikhail’s provocation, his approach prioritizes inclusivity and the subjective experience of individuals, his selflessness and generosity is inspiring.

Songs for the Storm to Come is an entirely new artwork that has been made for HOME’s gallery addresses the geographic, social and psychological transformation brought about by climate change, specifically rising sea levels.

Through the power of communal sound, this multi-sensory work is for me in many ways chilling, it’s also exhilarating but above all impels resilience, hope and action in the face of one of the most urgent issues of our time.”

Mikhail Karikis: Songs for the Storm to Come is curated by Clarissa Corfe.

Karikis exhibits internationally. In his most recent work for the stage, ‘Universe of Solutions’, he was artistic director for UNESCO’s Creative Cities Network inaugural cultural event for which he collaborated with 150 young people. Solo presentations include Sounds of a Revolution, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, PT (2024); Voices, Communities, Ecologies, Cukrarna Centre for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, SO (2024); Because We Are Together (2023), National Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens GR; Ferocious Love, Tate Liverpool (2020); For Many Voices, Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), UK (2019-20); Children of Unquiet, TATE St Ives, UK (2019-20); I Hear You, De la Warr Pavilion, UK (2019-20); Mikhail Karikis, MORI Art Museum, Tokyo, JP (2019); No Ordinary Protest, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2018); Ain’t Got No Fear, Turku Art Museum, FI (2018); The Chalk Factory, Aarhus 2017 European Capital of Culture, DK (2017) and Love Is the Institution of Revolution, Casino Luxembourg Forum d’art Contemporain, LU (2017).

Group exhibitions include 54^th Venice Biennale, (2011), IT; Manifesta 9, Ghenk, (2012); 19^th Biennale of Sydney, (2014); Kochi-Muziris Biennale, IN, (2016); Media City Seoul, KR (2015); British Art Show 8 (2016-7); 2^ndRiga International Biennale of Contemporary Art, LV (2020), 2^nd Saitama Triennale (2024), JP and others.

Karikis’s creative endeavours include music performances at Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Barbican Theatre, and musical collaborations with Björk, DJ Spooky and the Belgian record label Sub Rosa.

SHE Choir Manchester: is a free, cooperative, non-auditioned community choir for women and non-binary people. Through an inclusive and collaborative ethos, it has sparked an international network of choirs that celebrates music and friendship. Founded in Manchester by Susie, Hannah and Ellie (S.H.E) in 2010. www.SHEchoir.com

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

Maruan Sipert: Choreographer

Jamie Quantrill: Director of photography

Ian Szloch: 2^nd camera operator

Sophie Hewitt: Sound recording

Sound Force Studio: Sound mixing

Dr Neil Bruce and Matteo Polato are researchers from the Music and Sound department at School of Digital Art at Manchester Metropolitan University, and part of the D∀RK – Dark Arts Research Kollective, a group of academics and artists who explore the creative, communal and boundary-breaking potential of occultural practices.

Curator and Producer: Clarissa Corfe

Read the Songs for the Storm to Come Easy-Read Gallery Guide