We are looking forward to welcoming you to the first of many community meals at ATLAS Arts this year. Come join the new team for a chat and feel free to bring a dish or just sample our CLIMAVORE /Burns menu. This event is focused on the future, hearing your thoughts and ideas on ATLAS Arts’ work.
As part of this discussion, we’re delighted to be screening No Ordinary Protest, a short film by artist Mikhail Karikis and a group of 7‑year olds from a London Primary School. This film adopts the children’s science fiction novel ‘The Iron Woman’ (1993) by the British writer and poet Ted Hughes as an ecofeminist parable of the power of sound to create physical and social transformation.
In this story, a female superhero gifts children with a mysterious power – a noise. Transmitted by touch, this noise resonates with the collective howl of creatures affected by the pollution of the planet. As the children take matters into their own hands, they infiltrate factories and ‘infect’ adults with their demand for immediate action.
Through workshops, experimental pedagogical methods, reading, debating and play, Karikis and the children created a project together which reflects on the environmental themes of the book and imagines the enigmatic noise that assists the protagonists in their protest. Improvising with their voices, on musical instruments and toys, the children conduct cymatic experiments whereby a noise or vocal utterance takes on unique visual forms resembling ever-changing landscapes – the results echo the power of communal noise-making to mobilise change through sound.
While being uncertain about our ecological future, ‘No Ordinary Protest’ uncovers children’s political voice and activist imagination, where communal listening and noise-making become tools that can ‘move mountains’ and transform our world.
Originally commissioned by Whitechapel Gallery, Film and Video Umbrella, and Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art.
