Expressions of the Climate Emergency
Sounding the Alarm: Turning Science into Symphony
“What if We…?” is one among many pieces produced by the ClimateMusic Project founded by San Francisco-based artist Stephan Crawford, which aims to “harness this universal language [of music] to tell the urgent story of climate change to broad and diverse audiences in a way that resonates, educates, and motivates.” The works implore listeners to imagine the potential for a transformed future, a what-if scenario in which we achieve a more sustainable system. At other times, they strike a more somber tone, suggesting a what-if scenario in which the intransigence to serious climate action seen today persists, dooming us to a planet of depleted natural wonders and destroyed communities. They do so through overlaying techno beats and instrumental blends with audio snippets of startling facts about the stark reality of climate change.
The Artistic Battle for the Amazon
Making fashion a form of protest, Kurtumulus employs her design skills in Amazon-themed performance art. In one YouTube video, she represents the Amazon on a T-shirt by painting a pair of lungs — one half of which teems with life while its fire-consumed complement forebodes unparalleled destruction. For the first half of her video, Kurtumulus paints the life-affirming lung, which she comprises of mossy green tree leaves and surrounds with a hummingbird and butterflies. Its pastel colors induce mysticism in the vast and still much undiscovered biodiversity of the Amazon. The second half of the video, however, exposes the fragility of this beauty when after intersplicing her work with footage of the Amazon’s destruction, Kurtumulus’ second lung combusts into flames that leap across her chest. The work portrays the sharp contrast between the Amazon that viewers, present and future, may know — one of life or death — and challenges them to pick a side in the battle for its conservation. From a tranquil tone overlaid with peaceful bird chirps, the music in the second half of the video quickens in pace and strikes a tone of alarm, fomenting a palpable sense of anxiety in viewers that matches Kurtumulus’s race to finish the T-shirt design. Wearing her shirt, Kurtumulus coughs against her arm as if unable to stop herself and puts on a gas mask, staring straight into the camera. The moment issues a far more direct challenge to her audience — with the planet’s lungs at risk, so are her viewers’.
Reimagining Our Relationship to Nature
This urge to awaken public consciousness is not unique to Rockman. Increasingly, artists are cutting across mediums to disrupt artistic convention; it is not only the visceral imagery, but also the symbolic weight of their work that captures viewers’ attention, forcing them to face the climate emergency. Increasingly, artists are using their work to recultivate a sense of curiosity and wonder in the natural world, while also using themes of endangerment and extinction to convey the unparalleled threat posed by humans to this world's existence.
