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All Good Things Must Begin

Playwright Chantal Bilodeau shares Climate Change Theatre Action’s new anthology of short plays on the climate crisis, whose theme of ‘All good things must begin’ takes an imaginative leap through challenging times towards a just and regenerative world.

1,850 words: estimated reading time = 7.5 minutes

As the fifth Climate Change Theatre Action festival (CCTA) unfolded in the fall of 2023, the world broke an unfortunate series of records, with every month in that season becoming the warmest September, October, November, and December ever recorded. Furthermore, the year 2023 as a whole marked the first time global average temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels for a twelve-month period. If we needed a reminder of why we were doing what we were doing, it came loud and clear.

At the same time, in December 2023, at the UN Climate Conference in Dubai, thanks to a global Call to Action spearheaded by the Climate Heritage Network and signed by hundreds of arts and cultural organizations worldwide, the United Arab Emirates (hosts of COP28) and Brazil (future hosts of COP30 in 2025) announced the launch of the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action. An international coalition of UN Member States, the Group of Friends’ stated goal is to build “political momentum for the recognition of culture as a uniquely powerful force in climate change policy.” It remains to be seen how much influence this group will have and how this influence will translate into meaningful policies, but, at the very least, it confirms what many artists and cultural workers have known for years: There can be no transition to a more just and regenerative world without culture as a key driver.

Countless arts and cultural organizations are already working to address climate challenges with and within their community, capitalizing on the strength of cultural networks and the power of creativity and imagination. But we need more. As we know all too well, if we wait for change to come from the top, we will be waiting for a long time. The more we organize within our communities and work to dream up and implement the changes we want to see, the better prepared we will be to face the challenges ahead of us. In storytelling terms, this means we, artists, must be modern Jules Vernes and imagine not just the technology but also the systems – economic, social, environmental, educational, moral, etc. – of tomorrow, the systems that will support the lives of nine billion people on a finite Earth.

Showing the cover of ‘All Good Things Must Begin,’ edited by Chantal Bilodeau and published by the Arts & Climate Initiative and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. — ‘All Good Things Must Begin,’ edited by Chantal Bilodeau and published by the Arts & Climate Initiative and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts (2024), features 50 short plays and six essays by writers from around the world.

Climate Change Theatre Action

Inaugurated in 2015 and hosted biennially, CCTA is a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis, presented to coincide with the UN Climate Change Conferences. It is spearheaded by the Arts & Climate Initiative in partnership with the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, and aims to bring communities together and inspire them to take action on climate. It represents the busiest and most exciting part of our year, the one time when we get to feel, at least for a few months, that we do (maybe?) have a tangible impact.

For every festival, we commission fifty playwrights, representing every inhabited continent, to write a five-minute play about an aspect of the climate crisis based on a prompt. Then, we make this collection of plays available to anyone interested in presenting an event in their community during a three-month window in the fall. Events can range from readings to fully produced performances and from podcasts to film adaptations. Organizers are encouraged to design their event to reflect their own aesthetic and the needs of their community, and to include additional material by local artists.

Showing Monica Sanborn in ‘Actors Ready’ by Ethan King. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri. — Monica Sanborn in ‘Actors Ready’ by Ethan King. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri.

To emphasize the ‘Action’ part of Climate Change Theatre Action, we also invite organizers to think about an action – educational, social, or political – that can be incorporated into their event. These actions may involve collaborations with the scientific community or local environmental organizations, or they may take the form of donations or protests. In the past, organizers have pledged to reduce consumption and adopt plant-based diets, raised money for hurricane relief and tree-planting efforts, cleaned rivers, donated to food banks, and written letters to legislators to demand policy change.

The five-minute format of the CCTA plays is not accidental. We want the plays to be as user-friendly as possible so they can be presented in different contexts by people with varying levels of experience and accommodate a wide range of budgets, including no budget at all. And while the short format may sound innocuous, five minutes pack a surprising punch, reliably bringing audiences to tears, generating laughter, and providing serious fodder for reflection. The plays can be performed individually as part of larger events – such as conferences and festivals – or grouped together in any number to create an evening of theatre.

All Good Things Must Begin

CCTA 2023 took place from September 17 to December 23, 2023. Once we had selected our fifty playwrights, we offered the following prompt:

Our theme this year, ‘All Good Things Must Begin,’ is inspired by the journal entry of American science fiction writer Octavia Butler. Butler was determined to be a best-selling author. By setting intentions and visualizing this positive outcome, she defied the odds and became the author of many celebrated novels, winning each of science fiction’s highest honors. She was also incredibly prescient, writing about extremism, racial justice, and climate change some thirty years ago. While the worlds of her novels depict the violent challenges of today’s interlocking crises, her protagonists remain devoted to thriving, to achieving survival beyond the destructive and oppressive societies they come from.

The climate crisis demands the same kind of imaginative leap: We will create a just and regenerative world only if we dare to imagine it first and use that vision to guide us through the difficulties. We invite you to be solarpunks and envision radical pluralistic futures where nature and community thrive, and where we reject the apocalypse and embrace counterculture, post-capitalism, and decolonization. This doesn’t necessarily translate into utopias but into worlds where successes and failures exist side by side, and where hope, courage, and grief overlap.

All Good Things Must Begin: Short Plays Imagining the Future is the response to this prompt. Playwrights share their vision of what the future may hold with humor, poetry, playfulness, hope, courage, and sometimes grief and pain. They tackle topics such as intolerance, civic action, cultural heritage, interspecies relationships, and Indigenous knowledge in a variety of styles and approaches that provide as many entry points into a complex conversation. The book was released this past October and is available on Lulu Press in paperback and ebook, or from your domestic online bookstore.

Showing Scott Redmond in ‘The Polar Bears’ by Nicolas Billon. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri. — Scott Redmond in ‘The Polar Bears’ by Nicolas Billon. Presented by the Arts & Climate Initiative in September 2023 in New York City as part of ‘The Future Within Us,’ the kick-off event of CCTA 2023. Photo by Roshni Khatri.

Our goal with this publication is to make the fifty plays of CCTA 2023 available to as many people as possible so they can be studied, read, performed, and inspire the kinds of dreams that empower us to make bold changes. In addition to the plays, the book features six essays by members of the greater CCTA family: Himali Kothari, Elspeth Tilley, Mark Wallace, Clare Preuss, Ian Garrett, and GiGi Buddie. These essays provide insights on various aspects of the project, ranging from working with students to hosting events in areas dominated by the oil industry, and from exploring ecoscenography to understanding one’s role in protecting the planet. One of the essays also crunches down the numbers to evaluate the festival’s impact.

Climate anxiety and climate distress are on the rise, especially among the younger generation. While these feelings are healthy responses to the existential challenges we face, for any action to be possible, let alone sustainable, they must be addressed – and harnessed toward positive transformation. A way in which this can happen is through keeping a sense of possibility alive. By reminding ourselves that ‘good things’ don’t appear fully formed but must begin somewhere, and what we aspire to can be put in motion anytime, we can hopefully keep despair at bay. After all, beginnings are always acts of faith. So, whether you are an artist, an activist, an educator, or a student, we encourage you to get your own copy and use the plays to foster generative conversations and – hopefully – joyful action.

Find more

All Good Things Must Begin: Short Plays Imagining the Future, edited by
Chantal Bilodeau (2024), is published by Lulu, and available in paperback or ebook.

Climate Change Theatre Action, launched in 2015, is a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. CCTA is a U.S.-Canada collaboration between the Arts & Climate Initiative and the Centre for Sustainable Practice in the Arts. The creative prompts for the biennial CCTA commissions so far have been:

2017: Where Is The Hope?

2019: Lighting the Way

2021: Envisioning a Global Green New Deal

2023: All Good Things Must Begin

In 2023, the Climate Heritage Network issued its Call to Action to the UNFCCC to include cultural heritage, the arts and creative sectors in climate policy, resulting in the launch of the Group of Friends of Culture-Based Climate Action. In November that year, TIME reported that New Data Shows a Global Surge in Searches Related to ‘Climate Anxiety’.

To explore other ClimateCultures members’ experiences and ideas around using drama and theatre to explore climate themes, you could dip into Conversations with Work That Connects, discussions between Julia Marques and fellow members Daniel Bye, Tessa Gordziejko, Matt Law, Jennifer Leach and Andrea Carr; and in Gulp! Water Choices, Stories and Theatre, Adam Ledger shares the thinking behind the Bone Ensemble’s project on global water issues, creating an engaging and participatory family drama on environmental issues, inequalities and opportunities.

In February 2024, European science agency Copernicus announced that, for the first time ever, global average heating exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius, on average, for a 12-month period during 2023. Dr. Kristina Dahl, a principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), said in a UCS statement “This data doesn’t mean the primary goal of the Paris climate agreement has been breached, as nations committed to limiting global average temperatures over the long-term—typically considered 20 to 30 years—rather than tying their efforts to a day, month, or year-long anomaly. That said, world leaders should take serious heed of Copernicus’ latest finding by quickening their current snail’s pace to slash heat-trapping emissions and helping to safeguard communities and ecosystems from unavoidable climate impacts. The latest IPCC report found that the planet will likely breach the 1.5-degree-Celsius mark within the next 11 years unless global heat-trapping emissions peak by 2025.”

Chantal Bilodeau

A playwright and translator whose work focuses on the intersection of science, policy, art, and climate change, and co-organizer of Climate Change Theatre Action ...

‘If I Were a Tree’: Notes for the Pyrocene

In her new exhibition, photographer Joan Sullivan is haunted by a recurring question, “If I were a tree, what would I feel when the flames arrived?” — and confronts the Pyrocene as the world heats to record-breaking levels.

1,610 words: estimated reading time = 6.5 minutes

My new installation, ‘Si j’étais un arbre’ (in English: ‘If I were a tree’), is the second in a series of immersive artworks that give voice to the nonhuman. It is currently on display at the Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent in eastern Quebec, Canada, until 20th December, 2024.

Notes for the Pyrocene: Showing IF I WERE A TREE at the Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent in eastern Quebec, Canada. Photograph by Joan Sullivan © 2024 — IF I WERE A TREE at the Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent in eastern Quebec, Canada. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2024

While my previous installation, ‘La voix des glaces’ (in English: ‘Ice Voices’) focused on the disappearing ice of Quebec’s Saint Lawrence River, ‘Si j’étais un arbre’ focuses on the fires threatening Canada’s boreal forest. In both works, I cede my voice to the non-human beings (or nonhuman people, as invoked by the philosopher Timothy Morton) with whom we share this magnificent planet.

Black Summers

What would these nonhumans want to tell us before they disappear forever? Would we self-described ‘wise’ humans even be willing to listen to them if they could speak? I became obsessed with these questions in early 2020 following Australia’s ‘Black Summer’ wildfires that killed an estimated three billion nonhuman beings according to scientists.

It was this enormous loss of nonhuman life (rarely mentioned by the media) that pushed me over the edge and changed my artistic practice forever. I could no longer justify using my cameras to document climate change from a human perspective. I felt compelled to learn how to use my cameras in new ways to ‘see’ climate change from the perspective of nonhuman beings threatened by a rapidly warming world.

As described in my earlier ClimateCultures post, Giving Voice to the Nonhuman, Australia’s devastating wildfires triggered my transition away from 25+ years of documentary photography towards a more fluid, non-narrative form of artistic expression. But it would take another three years of research and reflection before the concept for ‘Si j’étais un arbre’ crystalized in my mind: an imaginary forest of burning trees in the middle of a gallery.

Notes for the Pyrocene: Showing "Forest burned in 2018, located north of the tiny crossroads of Labrieville near Lac Pipmuacan, witnessed in October 2024 during my trip to Nitassinan to visit the Innu of Pessamit". Photograph by Joan Sullivan, 2024 — “Forest burned in 2018, located north of the tiny crossroads of Labrieville near Lac Pipmuacan, witnessed in October 2024 during my trip to Nitassinan to visit the Innu of Pessamit.” Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2024

Gallery – Images 1 & 2: “Forest burned in 2023, also located north of Labrieville near Lac Pipmuacan. These were also taken in October 2024 during my trip to Nitassinan, to visit the Innu of Pessamit.” Click on images to enlarge.

In 2023, three years after Australia’s fires, Canada experienced its own record-breaking wildfires that scorched all 13 provinces and territories. By mid-July 2023, there were already 29 megafires burning out of control, each larger than 100,000 hectares. The region where I live – on the southern shore of the Saint Lawrence River in eastern Quebec – was not directly affected by these fires. But we all looked anxiously across the river at the dark ferruginous skies; we all breathed its toxic fumes. Maybe next year would be our turn.

Throughout that summer, I was haunted by a recurring question: “If I were a tree, what would I feel when the flames arrived?” The first half of this question became the title of my current installation.

Gallery – images 3 – 8: from the ongoing series IF I WERE A TREE. “Imaginary photos of the Pyrocene: the age of megafires. Using the technique ‘Intentional Camera Movement’, I move my camera in an agitated manner to imagine a tree on fire. This image was created ‘in camera’ in one single exposure; no images in this series have been manipulated in Photoshop.” All photographs: Joan Sullivan © 2024 Click on images to enlarge.

I imagined myself rooted to the ground, like a tree. I tried to embody the anxiety of a sentient being unable to flee. Using intentional camera movement (ICM), I moved my body in an agitated manner to imitate the flames fanned by high winds whooshing through the parched forest. The resulting images oscillate between representation and abstraction, underscoring our collective ambivalence to the escalating ecological-climate polycrisis.

Fifteen imaginary trees ‘on fire’ were printed on silk fabric, each nine-feet long (2.7 meters). By sewing the two longest sides together, I transformed these two-dimensional prints into three-dimensional sculptures that resembled tree trunks. These tree trunks were then suspended from the ceiling, creating a hanging forest ‘on fire’ in the gallery space.

Inspired by the Icelandic-Danish artist Olafur Eliasson, I invite visitors to wander through this silk forest to touch the trees ‘on fire’ while listening to their voices through the music of my friend, James Darling. Can immersive experiences like this decenter ourselves and create empathy towards nonhuman people upon whom we depend for our own survival? According to Eliasson, “It is necessary to unlearn how we see in order to be able to see with our bodies.”

IF I WERE A TREE in exhibition at Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent, in Rimouski, Québec. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2024

Welcome to the Pyrocene.

2023 was the hottest year ever recorded in human history, and scientists are “virtually certain” that 2024 will be even hotter. But 2024 will most likely be remembered as the first full calendar year to breach the 1.5℃ limit above pre-industrial levels established in the COP21 Paris Agreement. A dubious honour, a stark warning.

Even Brazil’s Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland – is on fire. And ‘zombie fires’ have become a thing, at least here in Canada.

Welcome to the Pyrocene – the age of mega-fires

Each artist will respond in his or her own way to this unfolding drama. As a visual artist struggling with ecoanxiety, I have found solace collaborating with other artists, musicians, scientists and even an association representing people who are blind or partially sighted to create tactile and acoustic installations that help us to ‘see’ climate change in non-visual ways.

I am particularly drawn to musicians for collaborative research and creation, especially those projects that give voice to the nonhuman. In my experience, these collaborations have resulted in visceral experiences for the public that resonate at a much deeper level than just a selection of my photos on the wall.

In the small city where I live, I have had the good fortune to collaborate with two brilliant musicians for my two most recent installations, ‘La voix des glaces and ‘Si j’étais un arbre. For the latter, I commissioned the cellist James Darling to compose music that gives voice to the trees threatened by approaching flames. I have long wanted to collaborate with a cellist — the cello being the instrument closest to the human voice. Its low bass notes have the potential to resonate within the human body. Might this be a way for some visitors to experience, possibly for the first time, embodiment with a nonhuman being?

James Darling performing ‘Artefact’, composed for the IF I WERE A TREE exhibition at Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent, in Rimouski, Québec. Photograph: Katia Fournier © 2024

Inspired by my imaginary photos of burning trees, James created ‘Artefact’, a 13-minute sound sculpture rich in textures and harmonies for 16 cellos. Its title makes reference to archaeology, i.e., objects created by human hands that are left behind and discovered much later. This enigmatic work incites visitors to question what they want to leave behind for future generations.

In addition to the imaginary silk trees, ‘Si j’étais un arbre’ also includes several branches and tree stumps that were burned in the 2018 and 2023 fires. In late October 2024, I crossed the Saint Lawrence River by ferry to visit Nitassinan, the ancestral land of the Innu of Pessamit. With permission from Innu elders, I collected several burnt branches to travel back with me to the south shore of the Saint Lawrence to be included as sacred ‘artefacts’. Mélanie Bellefleur, an Innu Territorial Guardian with the Council of Innu, crossed the Saint Lawrence in November to offer one of these burnt beings during the opening.

Burnt branches from the Nitassinan forest fires in the IF I WERE A TREE exhibition at Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent, in Rimouski, Québec. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2024

Finally, two weeks after the opening, I met, quite serendipitously, the choreographer and performer Martine Cardinal. On her first visit to the gallery, Martine felt a strong connection to the silk forest and immediately accepted my invitation to improvise during an upcoming cultural mediation session with the public (which you can watch below). Her performance was breathtakingly beautiful and fleeting.

Like Canada’s boreal forest.

Notes for the Pyrocene:: Showing IF I WERE A TREE in exhibition at Galerie d'art Léonard-Parent, in Rimouski, Québec - with performance by choreographer Martine Cardinal to soundsculpture 'Artefact' by James Darling. Photograph by Joan Sullivan © 2024 — IF I WERE A TREE in exhibition at Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent, in Rimouski, Québec – with performance by choreographer Martine Cardinal to soundsculpture ‘Artefact’ by James Darling. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2024

Find more

‘Si j’étais un arbre’ (‘If I were a tree’) is on display at the Galerie d’art Léonard-Parent in eastern Quebec, Canada, until 20th December 2024.

You can read Joan’s earlier ClimateCultures post, Giving Voice to the Nonhuman.

The Pyrocene is explored by Steven J. Pyne in his book, The Pyrocene
How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next (University of California Press, 2022). In his blog on the term, Pyne says “I coined the term Pyrocene as a catchphrase in a 2015 essay titled ‘Fire Age’ published in Aeon. Since then I’ve started using it regularly, and in 2019 began to propose it as an informing principle (in a literary sense) by which to understand the world our pact with fire has made. I have long regarded all of the Holocene as an Anthropocene. From a fire perspective I now regard the Anthropocene as a Pyrocene.”

Fellow ClimateCultures member and photographer Alan McFetridge has also explored the Pyrocene in his work, Landscape Fire in the 21st Century.

Joan mentions philosopher Timothy Morton in reference to ceding her voice to nonhuman people. There is a review of his book Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People (Verso, 2017) in The Guardian: Humankind by Timothy Morton review – no more leftist defeatism, everything is connected.

The quote from Olafur Eliasson — “It is necessary to unlearn how we see in order to be able to see with our bodies.” — is taken from the essay Olafur Eliasson: Interdisciplinary Approaches and their Interplay with his Art by Else Marie Bukdahl, in The Journal of Somaesthetics, No. 1 (2015).

Scientific American was one of many journals that published the finding that 2024 will most likely not “just be the hottest on record—it could be the first to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius“, as announced by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

‘Si j’étais un arbre’ was supported by a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.

L’artiste remercie le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien financier, ainsi que le Programme Transformer l’action pour le climat (TAC) à l’Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR).
The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts for its financial support, as well as the Transforming Climate Action (TCA) Program at the University of Quebec in Rimouski (UQAR).

Joan Sullivan

A photographer, writer and farmer who focuses on climate change and whose abstract, phenomenological approach to photography expresses her ecoanxiety and gives voice to the nonhuman.

School Strike For Baby Hope

Writer David Thorpe introduces his forthcoming climate fiction collection, School Strike For Baby Hope, and explores how our imagined futures must include the costs and dilemmas of better pathways, even where we avoid the worst of climate change.

1,440 words: estimated reading time = 5.5 minutes

In November, just in time for Christmas, my new collection of climate fiction short stories will be published by Android Press. The ten stories have been published elsewhere, often in obscure places. For example, the title story, School Strike For Baby Hope, was published by Extinction Rebellion on one of their websites.

Cautionary tales and possible futures

If a citizen living in pre-20th century Britain were to be told that in the future they would be able to travel anywhere in the world in a few hours, to buy any food from anywhere in the world at a local shop throughout the year, have free healthcare, most likely live until their 90s, and hold a device in their hands which could give them any kind of knowledge they asked and permitted them to talk to anyone in the world, and to see their faces, they would think the future was some kind of paradise. Well, we live in that age and we know different. We have threatened ourselves with the end of life on Earth — including our own end — in order to have these unnatural luxuries. We know the cost.

It seems to me that in imagining a future free from climate change we must be careful to imagine what kind of costs that might have. Every decision presents a dilemma. The purpose of governance is damage limitation; minimising the negative consequences of any decision. Unintentional consequences must be thought through. Climate fiction consciously does this.

Some of these stories are about the unintended consequences of action on climate change, so they serve as cautionary tales. These stories – At the Crux and For the Greater Good – reflect my interest in ‘one planet’ thinking – the ecological footprint as a measure of sustainability. I asked myself: if the country set itself the same task as one planet development in Wales – of satisfying the needs of inhabitants within the confines of a global fair and equal distribution of environmental impact – what could be the implications for the population? Living like this would demand monitoring of the entire ecological impact of the country and dividing it by the population each year.

School Strike for Baby Hope and Beacon arose from my experience of being in my local Extinction Rebellion group. We had many successful actions in Swansea and joined the national demonstrations in London. School Strike For Baby Hope appeared in Teens Of Tomorrow: Stories of Near and Far-Flung Futures, which explored possible futures through the stories of twelve courageous teens.

Showing the cover of 'Teens of Tomorrow' - published by Odd Voice Out Press © 2021 - featuring David's story 'School Strike for Baby Hope' — Teens of Tomorrow – published by Odd Voice Out Press © 2021 – featuring David’s story ‘School Strike for Baby Hope’

What else is cli-fi? If you read the Wikipedia entry it cites Jules Verne’s 1889 novel The Purchase of the North Pole as an early harbinger, which imagines a climate change due to tilting of Earth’s axis. His Paris in the Twentieth Century, written in 1883 and set during the 1960s, has Paris have a sudden drop in temperature, which lasts for three years. Wikipiedia lists J. G. Ballard’s climate extremism novels from the early ’60s and then, as knowledge of climate change increased, says fiction about it really started coming out, one of the earliest being Susan M. Gaines’s Carbon Dreams.

Should we always go with our imagination?

Imaginative works can be used to reinforce people’s prejudices, too, such as Michael Crichton’s State of Fear (2004), which was pounced upon by climate sceptics for reinforcing their view that climate change was some kind of conspiracy.

Then we encounter lots of dystopic films. From Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin’s 1936 Modern Times, through George Orwell’s 1948 book Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Lucas’ 1971 film THX 1138, Mega-City One from Judge Dredd, conceived in 1977, to Ridley Scott’s 1982 film Blade Runner, and The Day After Tomorrow (2004). They have all set the template for many other stories and films, such that in the popular imagination the sprawling mega-cities of the future will largely be over-populated, polluted, broken places, featuring dark towers, high levels of surveillance and crime, their citizens treated little better than battery-reared animals, and no room for nature.

But is the dystopic metropolis a self-fulfilling prophecy, subconsciously, if not consciously, reinforcing the mindsets of planners and architects? Does it soften up the public, preparing them to acquiesce in the face of grim and unimaginative design, polluted air, poor policing and service levels, corrupt or inefficient governance, long commute times, constant noise, high levels of personal danger?

Is this the reason why people do nothing despite being bombarded by the truth about the future and climate?

I think we need comedies about climate change and the future. For this reason, I have included The Chernobyl Effect and The Last Laugh in the collection. These are stories from my body of work about the character Doc Chaos, a darkly satirical character in the tradition of William Burrough’s Doctor Benway and Alfred Jarry’s Doctor Faustroll. This is dark comedy, exaggeration for comedic effect. Making people laugh is a way of slipping things under their radar.

Showing the cover for The Chernobyl Effect & The Last Laugh - stories of David's Doc Chaos character — The Chernobyl Effect & The Last Laugh – stories of David’s Doc Chaos character

The End

These days I spend all day in a wheelchair because of cervical myelopathy. I have become unable to feed myself or use both my phone and computer. The only way I can write this article is to dictate it, as a friend is kindly typing it for me. I have written elsewhere that my stroke in August 2021 was caused by high blood pressure and a result of climate change stress.

I now think that my present condition, and the fact that I see no hope in my future again, is a mirror of the present and the future of the planet as a whole. I wish it were not so, but I can’t believe anything else. For example, as the average temperature of the planet has risen, so has the myelopathy of my spine, and just as we find tipping points such as the melting of the ice caps in climate change, there are tipping points in my body when the nerves in my spine become trapped and suddenly I find I can no longer do something, like feed myself, that I could do yesterday. Then I think to myself “What will happen before it ends?”. And I’m glad I won’t be around to see the world shrivelling up as it gets too hot. Unfortunately, my sons will.

Look after yourselves and find something you love and stick with it.

Find more

School Strike For Baby Hope will be published by Android Press in November 2024. As well as other fiction — including novels Stormteller and Hybrids — David has written several books on sustainability, including One Planet Cities: Sustaining Humanity within Planetary Limits and The One Planet Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development. Find out more at his website. And you can read David’s blog on Substack.

The Fifth Estate published A personal story about climate anxiety and illness from our UK writer David Thorpe in August 2021: a “personal account of his illness and its connection to his absolute commitment to avoiding the worst of climate change. It’s a sobering and very worthwhile read”, where David talks about the link between climate stress and the stroke he had recently suffered. That article also links to his story Don’t Follow Leaders, which David wrote for the publication.

In previous posts for ClimateCultures, The Rise of Climate Fiction Part 1 and Part 2, David explores how the term ‘Cli-fi’ reveals the tension between our twin fascinations with utopian and dystopian visions, how fiction engages readers with human stories within the climate change one, and writers’ responsibilities — given that “stories are fundamentally how humans understand and spread wisdom as well as entertain themselves.” David also contributed a piece for our Environmental Keywords theme on Environmental Justice.

In 2017, David was one of our inaugural authors at ClimateCultures. He was one of the short story writers, poets and non-fiction writers commissioned to produce new writing at Weatherfronts climate change conferences for writers — two TippingPoint events that also inspired the creation of ClimateCultures. In Utopia and Its Discontents, he explores the thinking that went into his winning story, For the Greater Good, which was included in the free Weatherfonts ebook anthology published by Cambria Books.

David Thorpe

A novelist, scriptwriter and writer of comics and graphic novels, as well as a non-fiction writer on carbon-free energy and sustainable development.

Giving Voice to the Nonhuman

Photographer and writer Joan Sullivan shares her realisation that, no longer content to simply document climate change, a more fluid, non-linear visual language can evoke the nonhuman voice and reflect our own impermanence in a rapidly warming world.

2,300 words: estimated reading time = 9 minutes

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.
— Dorothea Lange

Earlier this year, I had the great pleasure to collaborate with a sound artist, Robin Servant, to create an interactive climate change art installation in Quebec, Canada. The result of our collaboration was ‘La voix des glaces’ (in English: ‘Ice Voices’), a multi-sensory installation that gives voice to the nonhuman: the disappearing ice on the Saint Lawrence River.

Sensing the nonhuman voice: Showing a visitor touching the braille text from recent IPCC reports embossed onto photographic ice sculptures, to listen to the underwater 'ice voices' during the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES, created by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant for the Centre d'artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec, Canada, from 24 Feb to 31 March 2023. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2023 — Touching the braille text from recent IPCC reports embossed onto photographic ice sculptures, Edwige Leblanc listens to the underwater ‘ice voices’ during the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2023

This was the first time that I exhibited my photographs as tactile sculptures. I grouped 24 of my abstract photographs of the rapidly disappearing river ice into eight triangular triptychs suspended from the ceiling in the center of the gallery. Swaying in the natural air currents of the gallery, these ‘ice sculptures’ resembled floating blocks of ice in the Saint Lawrence River.

Sensing the nonhuman voice: Showing a close-up of four ice sculptures at the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant, held at the Centre d'artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec, from 24 February to 31 March 2023. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2023 — Close-up of four ice sculptures at the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2023

Each photograph was embossed with braille text from recent IPCC reports. Visitors – both sighted and visually-impaired – were invited to touch the braille relief in a gesture symbolic of our collective blindness to climate change.

By touching my photographs, visitors triggered underwater audio recordings of the ice blocks as they shift and crack from friction, waves and tidal movements. Every time someone touched an image, the gallery filled with haunting, otherworldly ice voices. They destabilize us, pulling us into their evocative vortex, coaxing us to listen more intently. We find ourselves imagining what the ice is trying to tell us.

Sending the nonhuman voice: Showing a close-up of a visitor touching the braille text from recent IPCC reports during the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant, held at the Centre d'artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec, from 24 February to 31 March 2023 — Close-up of a visitor touching the braille text from recent IPCC reports during the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES. Photograph: Joan Sullivan © 2023.

Bringing back the nonhuman voice

Giving voice to the nonhuman has, since 2019, transformed my photographic practice from documentary to abstraction. This shift was triggered by two events. The first (which will likely repeat itself in 2023) was Australia’s 2019-2020 Black Summer – the catastrophic, uncontrollable wildfires that killed an estimated three billion nonhuman beings. I was traumatized by the images of blood-red skies, charred kangaroos clinging to fences, and birds falling out of the sky. I suddenly realized that I could no longer participate in documenting climate change. I felt an overpowering sense of urgency to find a more fluid, non-linear, non-narrative language with which to express my ecoanxiety.

The second event that made me question the role of photography in the Anthropocene was a 2019 interview with the author Amitav Ghosh. Responding to a question from Amy Brady, Ghosh explains:

“I think, in literary terms, the most difficult challenge a writer has in an age of climate change is determining how to give a voice to the non-human (emphasis added). And not just in terms of natural disaster – in general. It’s such a challenge. One writer who has done this very well is Richard Powers. I thought his book, The Overstory, was a huge event because it expanded the boundaries of what writers can do. Now I am asking similar questions: How do we restore nonhuman voices? How do we trace the influence of the human among the nonhuman?”

I had previously read Ghosh’s 2016 non-fiction book The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. But it was his 2019 quote above that inspired me — no, pushed me! — to completely change the way I used a camera. Instead of creating images from my perspective (while hiding behind a camera), I wanted to know how the nonhuman beings in front of my camera perceived climate change, from their perspective. What do they see when they look back at us? What do they feel about our destructive behavior and disregard for nonhuman life? What advice would they offer if given the chance? I was desperate to give voice to these nonhuman beings threatened in the age of man.

This shift in perspective, from the human to the nonhuman, has profoundly changed my art. Since 2020, I have been working on two series of abstract photos: ‘Je suis fleuve’ (in English: ‘Becoming River’) and ‘If I were a tree’. For both series, I have adopted a phenomenological approach in order to embody the nonhuman beings in front of my camera. It’s their story, not mine. If we humans are to survive the coming upheavals, we have no choice but to learn from our nonhuman relatives who were here millions of years before Homo sapiens sapiens first walked the earth. And many of them will likely still be here long after we have disappeared. So it would behove our self-described ‘wise’ species to absorb some of the wisdom from these ancient beings while there’s still time. But in order to do so, we must first slow down. We must learn to listen. We must learn to ‘see’ viscerally with our whole bodies, not just visually. This is embodiment.

A beauty filled with dread

Since Australia’s Black Summer, I have become obsessed with finding non-visual ways to enhance the photographic experience, both for myself (during the creative process) and for viewers (in the gallery setting). Instead of ‘photographing the river or the trees’, I ‘become the river or the trees’ through sustained contemplation and mimicry – moving my body in sync with the flowing water or the wind blowing through the branches. I do this using the technique ICM (Intentional Camera Movement). All of my ICM images are created in-camera; nothing is Photoshopped in post. To date, all my ICM images are single exposures, usually 1-2 seconds long. Through this experimental process, I have learned to embrace chance and mistakes. Most importantly, I have learned to stop trying to control every aspect (sharpness, composition, depth of field, etc.) as I did for 25+ years as a documentary photographer.

Untitled. From the series ‘Je suis fleuve’ by Joan Sullivan © 2023

I describe my new abstract photos as fluid and fleeting. My hope is that these ephemeral images provoke reflection on our own impermanence in a rapidly warming world. An article in a French-language art magazine here in Quebec described my new abstract photos as “d’une beauté pleine d’effroi” (in English: “of a beauty filled with dread”). To me, that’s as close to a perfect description as possible, not just of my photos but also of my state of mind.

Yes, I am filled with dread. Things do not seem to be heading in the right direction; there’s no sense of urgency. But I also refuse to do nothing while we collectively watch the world burn on our cellphones. I counter this dread with a more powerful burning passion: to dedicate every second of my remaining years (15? max 20?) to helping shatter the absurd illusion that Homo sapiens sapiens is somehow separate from and superior to the one trillion other species with whom we share this planet and upon whom we depend for our own survival.

This is what prompted me, in part, to question the environmental impact of my own photographic practice. I started to think about all the toxic chemicals in the inks and photo papers that are used to create the photographic prints for my exhibits. Even for those photos that were never printed, a huge amount of electricity is required 24/7 to store them on my computer, in multiple external backup drives, and on my website. Social media, email, charging camera batteries, and driving to locations also require electricity and energy. Then there’s the undeniable problem of how to dispose of photographic prints (they are not recyclable), not to mention the layers of plastic and stryrofoam that protect them during shipping. I could go on and on…

But it wasn’t until November 2021, during a duo exhibit with the video artist Anna Woch, that I became aware of an even more existential dilemma for a photographer. As I looked at my photos on the wall, a wave of queasiness came over me: I felt strangely uninspired by my own work. Or, I should say, uninspired by the way they were presented: as static, two-dimensional objects hanging against a flat wall, protected behind glass to ensure that no one would damage them. After standing alone in the gallery trying to understand why I felt this way, it finally dawned on me: how absurd it was that these abstract images of the rapidly disappearing ice on the Saint Lawrence River were considered untouchable, yet we humans are constantly meddling with and disturbing nature. Photographs are ephemeral, just like the disappearing ice on the Saint Lawrence. Why was it so sacrosanct to protect ‘art’ for decades if the world around us was burning down? What’s the effing point? On the day that I took those photos down, I mentioned to the director of the artist-run center, Philippe Dumaine, that this would be the last time that I exhibited my photographs in the traditional manner, two-dimensionally. I had no idea what my next exhibit would look like, but I sensed that I was standing on the threshold of a new direction in my artistic practice.

A month later, I was sitting at the kitchen table of the sound artist Robin Servant, whom I had heard through the grapevine was collecting underwater recordings of the river ice with his hydrophones. In our early discussions, I had not yet developed a vision for the tactile three-dimensional photo sculptures; that would come much later thanks to the input of several artist friends. But when I first proposed this project to Robin, I already knew that I wanted to incorporate braille text into my photos in response to the rhetorical question “Are we not collectively blind to the impact of climate change?” After many iterations over the next 14 months and in collaboration with the local chapter of People Living with Visual Handicaps, we presented ‘La voix des glaces’ in February-March 2023 at the Centre d’artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer in eastern Quebec. Funding for ‘La voix des glaces’ was provided by the Canada Council for the Arts.

Images 10-13 from the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES. Photographs: Joan Sullivan © 2023. 10 A partial view of the installation, made up of eight triangular abstract photo sculptures representing the disappearing ice on Quebec’s Saint Lawrence River. 11 A visitor touches the braille text on one of the eight photographic ice sculptures. 12 A group from the Gaspesie chapter of the Association of Persons with Visual Handicaps visits the installation. 13 Gaëtan Banville, who is blind and a member of the Lower Saint Lawrence chapter of the Association of Persons with Visual Handicaps, reads the braille text from recent IPCC reports embossed onto the eight photographic ice sculptures. Click images for full size.

The response to this multisensory interactive installation, in which visitors were able to experience embodiment of the disappearing river ice by using three of their five senses — sight, touch and hearing — was phenomenal. According to the Centre’s director, attendance at our installation broke all recent records. Especially among the youth. The secondary school students in particular were most captivated by ‘La voix des glaces’. One of their art teachers showed me some of the artwork that her students created after visiting our installation — such incredible abstract paintings, full of energy, movement, and emotion. And yes, rage. It gave me goosebumps knowing that some part of my work resonated with and was internalized by these young people. This gives me hope. We can live with beauty and sadness at the same time.

Showing a publicity poster for the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES at the Centre d'artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec. — A publicity poster for the interactive installation LA VOIX DES GLACES at the Centre d’artistes Vaste et Vague in Carleton-sur-Mer, Quebec.

I’m currently working on the conception for a new exhibit in 2024 or 2025 — my most audacious to date — that incorporates elements of ‘La voix des glaces’ but goes one step further. I’ll write about this in a future post.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

P.S. If anyone out there knows Amitav Ghosh, please thank him for inspiring me to experiment using my camera in new ways that give voice to the nonhuman.

Find more

‘La voix des glaces’ — created by Joan Sullivan and Robin Servant — was exhibited at Vaste et Vague artists’ centre in Carleton-sur-Mer (Quebec) from 24th February to 31st March 2023. It was supported by The Canada Council for the Arts.

Les artistes remercient le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien financier, et tous ses partneraires pour l’appui précieux : Centre d’artistes Vaste et Vague, Centre VU, Engramme et La Chambre Blanche. / The artists thank the Canada Council for the Arts for its financial support, and all its partners for their valuable support: Center d’artistes Vaste et Vague, Center VU, Engramme and La Chambre Blanche.

Le Devoir, Quebec’s largest independent French-language newspaper, published Faire parler les glaces pour montrer que le climat s’effrite, a review of ‘La voix des glaces’, in February 2023. The Vie des arts magazine article that described Joan’s abstract images as “d’une beauté pleine d’effroi” (“of a beauty filled with dread”) is Un vent du fleuve : expositions au Centre d’art de Kamouraska (A wind from the river: exhibitions at the Kamouraska Art Center: 19th September 2020).

You can see more of Joan’s series ‘Je suis fleuve’/’Becoming River’ and ‘If I were a tree’ at her website.

You can read Joan’s previous ClimateCultures post, Deconstructing our Dominion Stories in a Time of Unravelling, a joint review of After Ithaca: Journeys in Deep Time, by Charlotte Du Cann (2022) and Loss Soup and Other Stories, by Nick Hunt (2022).

The 2019-20 Black Summer in Australia was covered by Reuters in Australia, scarred by bushfires, on high alert for dangerous summer (19th September 2023) and by the Guardian in The black summer bushfires killed 3 billion animals. They are our relatives; they deserve to be mourned (31st March 2023).

Amy Brady interviewed Amitav Ghosh for the Chicago Review of Books: The Uncanniness of Climate Change (18th September 2019). Ghosh’s 2016 book, The Great Derangement: Climate change and the unthinkable was published by University of Chicago Books.

Joan Sullivan

A photographer, writer and farmer who focuses on climate change and whose abstract, phenomenological approach to photography expresses her ecoanxiety and gives voice to the nonhuman.

Hope Tales – Stories for Change

Entrepreneurial thinker, practical activist and artist Nicky Saunter shares the Hope Tales project she’s working on to find creative ways to make sustainable futures and talk about the role of hope, imagination and story in facing climate change.

1,170 words: estimated reading time = 4.5 minutes approximately

My work with the Rapid Transition Alliance is frequently a strange mix of dreadful fear and awe-inspiring hope. Our field is bang in the middle of climate change and therefore features a daily stream of reports, commentary, data and science on how poorly we tiny humans are doing in curbing our overconsumption and weening ourselves off our drug of choice that is fossil fuels. It is a veritable tsunami that threatens to overwhelm us every day: as wide as it is deep and moving faster every day. It can seem too large to approach with any purpose or clarity. Feelings of panic and hopelessness start to flutter in our bellies — you are probably feeling this already. What is more, climate change is now part of a ‘polycrisis’ — a perfect storm of catastrophic issues, from social division and isolation to pandemics and ecological breakdown.

Grim stuff indeed. But then suddenly in comes a story about yet another person or group who get together — often without much money to start with but a big idea — and do something that is simply brilliant and gives us hope for the future. And I can take a breath again.

Creativity for building change

The significance of this maybe lies less in the actual idea and the ‘fix’ that is being applied to a particular part of this vast issue. Instead, it lies in the inspiring way that single humans continue to work together in the face of impossible odds to cooperate, create and heal — often with surprising success. Despite what pundits would have us think Darwin said about the survival of the fittest and the drive for ruthless competition, we are excellent at cooperating and skillful at creative thinking. We are also capable of fast, practical action. The bit we find hardest is to stop either scaring ourselves witless or putting our fingers in our ears and waiting for all the horrible stuff to go away. How do we open our eyes, follow the science and use our creativity to design and build a new future together on this beautiful planet?

Our Hope Tales project focuses specifically on this feeling; looking at creative ways to make a sustainable future, and talking about the role of hope, imagination and story in facing climate change. Hope Tales is a collaboration between the Rapid Transition Alliance, the Centre for Public and Policy Engagement at the University of Essex and the New Weather Institute, using the power of story to investigate real hope for our future. The Rapid Transition Alliance is known for its research and publications on “evidence-based hope” — stories from the near and distant past that illustrate how real rapid change might be made. But the Hope Tales work has pushed further into the field of creativity, using fiction, poetry and art to stimulate both thought and action on potential new ways of living on Earth.

Showing 'Hope Tales' Chapbook 1: Air

Air, Land, Water – Hope Tales in place

The concept is simple: to gather a group of people in a specific place for a few hours to share short performances of their work on a given topic. The overarching theme is Hope and each event looks through the lens of a further elemental subject. So far, we have looked at Air in a beautifully appointed vintage cinema in Crystal Palace, considered the Land in earthy Somerset in an old woollen mill, and felt the pull of Water in ancient Colchester as part of the Essex book festival. We have held a pinecone on our palm while telling the story of a tree planted by suffragettes, we have woven local plants into plaits in thanks, we have watched oysters clean river water of our filth, and we have listened to the tale of two plaice swimming the seas of Eastern England. We have met a lot of new people, shared spaces and tea and mince pies with them, laughed and gasped in equal share, wondering at the ideas of others and the beauty of their self-expression.

Showing Oysters cleaning polluted river water — Oysters cleaning polluted river water

Hope tales: Showing Weaving plants into plaits — Weaving plants into plaits

Hope Tales: Showing a collaborative poem on earth — Collaborative poem on earth

Once the event is over, the content prepared for this one-off performance is then compiled into a small and beautiful book, called a ‘chapbook’. Chapbooks were small, cheaply produced books widely sold and highly popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sold by a ‘chapman’, they were used to publish popular or folk literature, almanacks, children’s stories, folk tales, ballads, political prospectuses, poetry and religious tracts. Our own chapbooks follow this tradition of broad subject matter, bite-sized pieces for easy reading and made to be shared and passed on.

Pandemic learning in action

There is something about the forming and sharing of creative work in an intimate space for a one-off performance that generates excitement, concentrated listening and a keen enjoyment of what others bring. It also reminds us how such interactive and collaborative forms of entertainment are so much more fulfilling to all than the treadmill of consumption we so often ride.

Part of the inspiration for this work came from the global pandemic, during which a flourishing of creative, homemade entertainment was shared and enjoyed worldwide without huge investment or any financial purchases being required. The Rapid Transition Alliance documented this flowering of generosity and creativity in a series of short reports that looked at examples of positive stories. Remember how nature returned and deer wandered through empty shopping malls? How ballerinas unable to dance on stage took to their kitchens and balconies for impromptu performances watched by millions stuck at home? How people of all skill levels took up pencils, paints and brushes, tried sculpture, made their own clothes, sewed and crocheted for each other? How we mended our old stuff, swapped it with others, cooked for those who couldn’t and planted seeds once again?

Hope Tales is taking the pandemic learning and putting it into action with a real focus on place. We try to choose towns that are not big, wealthy or famous for anything in particular. We are showing the diversity of the ordinary and the stories that lie around us in droves, just waiting to be heard and acted on.

Showing Hope Tales Chapbook II: Land

Find more

The first two Hope Tales chapbooks can be found here: The Hope Tales series.

You can explore the work of the Rapid Transition Alliance to share inspiring and varied examples of rapid transition and show what kind of changes are possible, how people can help to shape them, and what conditions can make them happen.

The New Weather Institute is a co-op and a think-tank, created to accelerate the rapid transition to a fair economy that thrives within planetary boundaries. The Centre for Public and Policy Engagement at the University of Essex supports academic communities build partnerships with policymakers and the public so that research and education at the University of Essex can improve people’s lives.

Nicky Saunter

A practical activist, campaigner, social entrepreneur and artist with a particular focus on communication, between people and between humans and the rest of the natural world.