{"id":557,"date":"2022-12-02T18:22:38","date_gmt":"2022-12-02T18:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/?p=557"},"modified":"2026-06-04T20:06:21","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T20:06:21","slug":"sink-or-swim-performing-the-iniquities-of-the-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/26\/sink-or-swim-performing-the-iniquities-of-the-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Sink or Swim: Performing the Iniquities of the Climate Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lara Stevens<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, Tongan-Australian performance artist Latai Taumoepeau staged Repatriate<\/font>, in which she dances in a Perspex tank, her body slowly submerged in water. In a remarkably similar work, Rising<\/font> (2018), renowned Serbian performance artist Marina Abramovi\u0107 created an avatar of herself drowning in a tank with rising water levels with which spectators\/players could interact via Virtual Reality technologies. These performances explore the impact of climate catastrophes on communities vulnerable to rising sea levels, highlighting the difficulties in representing the scale of global warming and complexity of its social effects. As the climate emergency escalates, Repatriate<\/font> and Rising<\/font> draw attention to its uneven impact on particular bodies, cultures and nations and prompt the question: what is the role of performance as a catalyst for climate action?

Keywords: <\/strong>climate crisis, Taumoepeau, Abramovi\u0107, performance, Pacific Islands<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 9 November 2021, a 3.5-meter puppet named \u201cLittle Amal,\u201d representing a 10-year-old Syrian refugee girl, arrived in Glasgow for the International Climate summit, COP26. Little Amal \u201cwalked\u201d 8,000 miles across Europe from Turkey, meeting new people and playing with children in the villages, towns and cities through which she travelled (Runciman). Little Amal (whose name means \u201chope\u201d in Arabic) was the centre of a performance event called The Walk<\/em> that aimed to remind Europeans about the plight of refugees. Although she did not speak, she came with a narrative as she travelled\u2014she was searching for her mother, she wanted to get back to school, she was making the journey that so many refugees are forced to make\u2014to begin a new life in a foreign land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little Amal was created by dozens of craftspeople from the puppeteering team who made War Horse<\/em>, the Handspring Puppet Company (Zuabi).[1]<\/sup><\/a> Partly animatronic, she was operated by four puppeteers at a time\u2014one internal on stilts, the others external controlling her back and arms. She had to be both light and durable to survive the journey and did not speak because she moved through so many territories with a wide range of different languages. Her designers and makers were, therefore, very strategic in ensuring that she could communicate clearly using her body language and her operators had to be highly skilled in their collaborative embodiment (Kohler and Jones).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Little Amal arrived at COP26 on \u201cGender Day\u201d where she performed a gift exchange with Samoan activist Brianna Fruean (Filks). Her performance emphasised the uneven gendered impact of the climate crisis upon women and children and the uncertain future for growing numbers of climate refugees. Little Amal\u2019s oversized stature and durational performance was attention-grabbing and interactive with a wide range of communities. Appearing at events in eight different European countries, her silence gave people the opportunity to tell their stories of migration & refuge in spaces where they could be heard (Zuabi). Furthermore, The Walk<\/em> linked her to \u201cThe Amal Fund,\u201d a fundraiser for young refugees, acknowledging this growing problem in a climate emergency (Zuabi). Her appearance at COP26 and interaction with Fruean made vivid the intersection of the political and the performative, the symbolic and the real. Little Amal and The Walk<\/em> drew attention to the intersectional injustices at the heart of climate catastrophes which are the focus of this article. It is significant that she finished her journey by interacting with a Pacific Islander\u2014a reminder that the first climate refugees were those from islands in the Pacific Ocean and that these enforced relocations are set to worsen as the crisis intensifies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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