Ferocious Love

Ferocious Love

Exhibition by Mikhail Karikis
Tate Liverpool
Until 22nd November 2020

Reviewed by Colin Serjent

This exhibition left me in the dark! I have attended many exhibitions over the years but never had to endure the absurd situation of trying to avoid colliding into columns and other man-made structures in trying to inch my way around the exhibition space in almost total darkness.

Why was this the case? Maybe Mikhail Karakis was trying to symbolise climate change, in its many and varied forms, as darkness enveloping the world. But to be honest I have no idea if this is the case.

Karakis has described his exhibition as reflecting on young peoples perspectives on an uncertain future on Earth.

I am not sure whether he has the evidence to even represent a minority of young people, which must number hundreds of millions around the planet.

Karakis and his collaborators imagine a weather system in 2050 when they predict the four seasons, spring, summer, autumn and winter, will no longer be recognisable as we know them at the present time.

Why has he looked at this dire prospect in thirty years time? The regular features of the seasons are already disintegrating. Why not pinpoint the drastic changes at a more realistic date, 2030?

Sung by the protest musical group, The Liverpool Socialist Singers they vocalise the echoes of noises of dramatic meteorological observations.

The very little light that is emitted in the exhibition was a video installation, devised in conjunction with students from Birmingham School of Art, featuring a hypothetical group of young people who ruminate on how a climate change calamity might unite them. You have to ask in what ways would this occur and what would be the long-term outcome?

As a footnote I would highly recommend watching the film ‘Homo Sapiens’, directed by Nikolaus Geyrhalter, released in 2016, which depicts an extraordinary vision of a post-human world.

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/mikhail-karikis-ferocious-love

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