Mikhail Karikis: Ferocious Love at Tate Liverpool

Listen up: As part of its reopening this month, Tate Liverpool prepares to unveil Ferocious Love – a new audio-visual installation by Mikhail Karikis. The artist is well known for the immersive quality of his work, which explores the human voice as a sculptural material and socio-political agent. Many of his projects are born in collaboration with sections of society considered to have little political voice of their own. For his major commission I Hear You at De La Warr Pavilion last year, for example, he worked with carers and non-verbal people to examine the relationship between listening and care.

While the young people leading the environmental movement today are perhaps not voiceless, they could certainly be listened to more. Developed in collaboration with students and activists, Ferocious Love imagines the very possible future that they and the generations after them could inherit. A future in which the climate has drastically changed and seasons have become unrecognisable. This is altered landscape is captured in a new sound composition of weather-like effects recorded by the Liverpool Socialist Singers, interpreting the noises of wildfires, flooding and other extreme weather (problems we’re already facing today).

Rather than simply a message of doom, however, Ferocious Love will reflect on the potential for calamity to bring communities together and the need for mutual care in the face of the climate crisis. Coinciding with FACT’s The Living Planet programme and upcoming exhibition And Say the Animal Responded? (featuring an ocean choir of whales and the ‘scratching’ music generated by a colony of DJ ants), Liverpool seems a good place to head this summer for anyone with an interest in the health of our planet and all lifeforms it supports.

Entrance is free but a timed ticket must be booked in advance.