Forming Karikis’ latest work investigating climate change, its psychological impacts and the sonic memory of nature, Songs for the Storm to Come is a sound and video installation focusing on collective and individual responses to impending climatic transformations, while searching for ways to activate our trust in the possible, and to imagine hopeful shared futures. Engaging with the urgency of climate change, the work proposes listening and communal sound-making as strategies to cultivate empathy, foster climate care and prepare us for what is to come. While voicing an acoustics of resistance, the work declares that change 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, as well as with sound researchers from the School of Digital Arts at Manchester Metropolitan University. The film centres on listening and the collective production of sound as calls to action and as a power to bring us together in the face of change. 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 sociopolitical changes required, and imagine possible alternatives, following the ‘deep listening’ workshop methods of queer composer Pauline Oliveros, guided by Karikis. The group also reflect on the book Ideas to Postpone the End of the World by indigenous leader and philosopher Ailton Krenak, as well as Timothy Morton’s All Art is Ecological, and read extracts from the text The Universal Right to Breathe by Cameroonian political thinker Achille Mbembe. 
 
Alongside the film, placards will display visualisations of London and the UK’s projected geographies modelled by the latest climate data; with a large-scale printed textile from Karikis’ series of thermal maps, recording annual record-breaking heatwaves since he began the project during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Karikis will collaborate with local young people on a range of activations, including workshops to create placards that will form part of the final installation. Materials displayed will include archival imagery of environmental protest and messages conceived by participants during the workshops. The artist will also work with the group on a newly devised choral performance exploring the climate emergency, scheduled for Friday 4 July. More information about the performance will be available soon.