Climate Change Art and Music
Art, music, poetry, dance, and other forms of expression are a vital part of humanity’s work towards stopping climate change and healing the Earth. This body of work we see as serving two important purposes:
- To help us understand the effects of climate change on an intellectual and intuitive level. Often the numbers and sheer scale of the problem are difficult to grasp. Certain art works and musical compositions have endeavored to make the changes brought about by increased greenhouse gases felt in a direct way.
- To help us acknowledge, process, and transform our emotions around climate change
Promoting local artists and musicians who are working with themes related to climate change is part of the mission of CREATE, and so please contact us if you would like to share your work. Check back for more information as we discover what people are creating here in Chicago.
In the meantime, here are some links to art and creators making powerful climate change inspired expression:
- Madeleine Jubilee Saito has made beautiful distillations of our collective climate and enviromental experience
- The blog of Ed Hawkins, the originator of the design shown at the top
- Two-minute shower songs, created in 2018 when Cape Town faced severe water shortages and residents were asked to limit their showers to under 2 minutes
- Musician and author Xuihtezcatl’s song “Broken”. For more information on his book and his work with Earth Guardians: earthguardians.org/xiuhtezcatl
- Craig Santos Perez is a poet from Guam who has specialized in eco-poetry. Here is one of his poems:
Love Poem in a Time of Climate Change (Sonnet II)
Craig Santos Perez
after Pablo Neruda
My love, I have crossed so many borders
for a kiss, smuggled by strangers,
I followed dream tracks in the desert,
where there’s no spring, no mercy, only this
mass migration towards your refuge.
My love, I walked amongst labor
that global capital forgot, traversed bridges
of bones, and witnessed populations
collapse around me, with the hope
to become your citizen. My love,
embrace my desperation, my day’s labor,
touch me, as if we’ve always been
interwoven, from our cars
all the way down to our cancers.