Four creatives; three visual artists and a musician, share their perspectives on the Amazon Forest Fires and climate change concerns that have stunned communities across the planet.
Around 76,000 fires were burning across the Brazilian Amazon this year, an increase of over 80 percent over the same time period last year. Wildfires continue this season, currently affecting California, USA, and fires are expected to get worse through to December since Diablo Winds and Santa Ana winds will get stronger. Scientists largely agree wildfires are worsened by the onset of climate change.
A group of creatives speak out on the issue of wildfires and climate change. Here's who they are and what they had to say..
Sharon Cordeiro - artist
"Growing up with abuse, I wasn't allowed to express any opinions. Instead, I used art. Now, we are all victims of abuse and again no one listens. Especially the voiceless animals. So, I dedicate this to them, those who burn for our pleasure. May they use MY voice. My art."
Kirsty Heggie - musician
Kirsty Heggie is a singer song-writer from Scotland. In the above video Kirsty performs 'A fire in the forrest'. An excerpt of the lyrics from this piece are shown below:
"Under the restless waters the maiden cries alarmed
News of Patcha Mama has left the tribe disarmed
A fire in the forrest
And a smoke that eats the heart
The maiden sings her haunting song
And waits for the war to start
All the waters of the deep
Cannot ease the world above
Once I lured the men to their death
But now Im lured by love
Have you heard of the sea siren
Who drowns men with her breath
Well even a songstress sea maiden
Can sing herself to death.
I must go to depths of darkness
Where you cannot follow me
For I have seen such things
I fear no one would wish to see.
I can't perform my magic
Upon the solid ground..."
Elinor Clare Rowlands - artist and poet
Elinor Rowlands is founder and director of Magical Women, a project that seeks to unite professional women and ADHD artists to share their identity through the arts. Magical Women is based in Battersea Arts Centre. She is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates internal and external landscapes, autistic/ADHD identity and language and how non typical processing enhances creativity and chaos. She writes from an autistic/ADHD pen and tongue. She is also an arts writer for Disability Arts Online.
The raging fires of the east take with it all of the bees
The raging fires of the east take with it all of the bees
The sleepers can no longer snooze because the air is thick with disease
This disease of money
Branches of trees, hands to hold onto, they are burning to their stump, collected
As dreams from the BFG, yet without glass jars or bottles of magic glitz, instead,
Dazed eyes, as they can’t quite believe why this is happening.
A church on fire, its art and brick and mortar all reduced to black smoke, a billion of hard cash paper flung at it - the paper might miss, it might burn with it
But this rainforest, unwet, parched, strung out to die
Wailing and luminous
More flames, more heat, the angry rolling tongues of the young
Feast on found change, this metal will do nothing to change
The narrative.
Young people of today - what do they know? They stand at gates protesting
Nostril gnarling, they call for tomorrows where environment is how we’ll survive - you’re birthing babies - they won’t be elastic plastic in golden glass towers for much longer
If
Nay,
When the world comes to an end.
Sighing, air breathing from,
My tongue that,
Their tongues that
Remain ignored, shut down
They’ve hidden the scissors
Our tongues wag
We go to speak
They are deaf to us
Our arms seek mercy, we seek stone.
We roam our bodies round trees, hugging them as if they’re our own.
We return to the ground restless, apologising. We are sorry.
Trees beating hearts, rhythm in their heads as they tell a different story, as they tell a different story
But it’s not heard by the reigning money
Paper flickerer
This money started out as trees once.
For they do not realise, they are burning their own money.
For they do not realise they are burning away their wealth.
Darkened days, days so dark, that they’ll be waiting for a light that will never return.
We are the lucky ones,
To know that there was something for us to recognise there is the opposite of nothing
This is us fighting it out, speaking out, being the light workers
But when our lights get dimmed,
When we are put out stamped out as the trees are
When the buzzing of the bees cease,
When all is trapped in the burnt ashes
There won’t be the young ones to do your fighting for you
For they warned you of this growing darkness
Saw it seeping from the clouds
You were greedy thinking you were here forever
For another dawn, for another day.
You were wrong.
C Nature Art - artist
The above artwork is titled 'Drowning time', representing the time pressure we are under in the face of climate change, that triggers catastrophic environmental events such as that of the wildfires.
The artists behind C Nature Art grew up in the North East of Scotland with a vivid imagination, having drawn inspiration from her Scottish heritage, geological studies, and the natural landscape of the Highlands. Find out more via the C Nature website here
What do you think?
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