we watch it burn [Chamber Ensemble & Electronics, 2020]

Details

Large Chamber Ensemble
[1(=B.Fl).0.1(=BCl).0 - 0.1.0.0 - 1perc - hp - pno(=synth) - Strings & Live Electronics]
2020
9'

About this work

"I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is."
- Greta Thunberg, January 2019

Looming behind the premiere of ‘we watch it burn’ was the all-too-recent devastation across Australia from the unprecedented amount of wildfires in 2019-20. The title for this piece was decided back in mid-Summer 2019, before these awful events began, but it felt disingenuous to change the title at this late stage in January 2020, given that the piece is about watching our world burn - whether metaphorically or now, literally - around us.

We sit behind our screens, we watch these devastating events occur half a world away from our own, and we can forget that our comfortable lives - the way that we live - has a direct impact on the world around us. The desire for cheap palm oil causing massive deforestation in the South American rainforests, our single-use plastic bottles causing our oceans to be filled with microplastics, our desire for fast and cheap travel impacting our planet and causing huge changes to our earth’s atmosphere.

We experience that anger, that compassion for those affected by climate change around the world. But compassion fatigue can often set in, and whilst the horror remains, there is a danger that we can grow accustomed to the events unfolding us.

Our world is actually on fire. We are watching it burn.

‘we watch it burn’ was commissioned by UPROAR Ensemble, and premiered on 28th February 2020 at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff.


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