“A staggering 20 million of the 26 million people currently estimated to be displaced by climate change are female, according to an extensive report launched by the Women’s Environmental Network (WEN) on 2 March at the House of Commons.”
“Women living in poverty are least responsible for climate change.” Oxfam, Canada.
“According to eco feminst thinkers such as Ariel Salleh, Caroline Merchant and Mary Mellor, there is a strong link between environmental degradation, due to the lack of value given to the environment, with the global patriarchal economic system. This system fails to properly value both the work of women and ecosystems.”
Follow the link to read the report:
Gender and the climate change agenda
The impact of climate change on women and public policy
Women’s Environmental Network, 2010.
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Friday: our video opened at Vane in Newcastle. It looked great; hope, passion, sadness, bathos and pathos all contained within the rectangle of the projection screen. The music, words and performances all seem to work together. It will take us some time to digest what we have done, but for now, I think I can say we are experiencing a slight glow of satisfaction, a feeling of having done something… not sure what, but something! While we were watching it at the opening, people were staying for its whole glorious 47 minutes! Incredibly exciting!
The video starts with Kaffe sitting outdoors in the snow at a fake cafe, where she orders songs from our menu. It then moves through monk look-a-like rehearsals of Stone Cold Soup to performances in the aisles of the climate train. Then we sing on the march, before being filmed back in the confines of public transport as we recite our poetry on tubes and busses.
It seems that we now have some fans too, a couple approached us at the opening singing both Stone Cold Soup and Tap Water … . A testament to its earwormy musical soundtrack?
The best apple crumble I’ve ever tasted; our organic gastro-celebration at Scrumpy Willow*
It’s a wrap. Gina (editor in chief) and I (back seat editor/extra eyes) sat through the final throws of an edit until 1am and I am traveling to Newcastle to deliver the DVD first thing in the morning. We are showing in the AV Festival at a Gallery called Vane.
You can see The Gluts singing Fizzy Water here (the style is more folk than eco-electro), or perhaps you would prefer a few Extinct Animals?
Video still of The Gluts singing in Copenhagen
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So yes we got in the studio and laid down all those songs and how good was it to take that stride into, wellwellwell, this is the music we have made. Our singing is amazing. Amazingly out of tune sometimes and just as easily perfect. By Sunday the voices too are really cracking through. Hayley’s opera training reveals its glorious self, Kaffe finds bottom G and Gina’s 30 years in recording studios never waivers. What a blast. I think we’ve even got a couple of hits in there.
Watch out Café Oto on the 19th, there could be a rip roaring show ahead.
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Phew, a veritable whirlwind of recording… we recorded 13 songs in 2 days. Favorite moments included listening back to Passion Fruit Pie, which made me cry as I heard the poetry in our replies to the question What do we want? More gleaning less cleaning, education for all children, overgrown gardens, ban small plastic toys, death by champers, take me to your climate leaders, halt extinction, wild meadows in every neighbourhood, bring back bees, death by bonuses, more brilliant eco-design…
In our song Hunting and Gathering, we celebrate gleaning stuff from bins:
We are the scavengers
The consumer clean-up crew
Our eyes are peeled for free spew
We save my money and work less
To get us out of this mess
My favorite, favorite moment during our recording session was Gina’s addition of a tongue tripping ‘Move away from the bins please’ rasped through a loudhaler at the end of the song.
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We will be working with sound engineer and guitarist Sherry Ostapovitch.
Sherry playing the drums inside Kim Gordon's tent in the Her Noise exhibition
Kaffe has worked blooming hard to set this whole session up, and reconnected with Sherry after many years. I originally met Sherry when she came to see a piece of I did called Soundgaze, in 2000. In 2005 we reconnected again when she worked on the exhibition Her Noise at the South London Gallery. Kaffe and I both had work in the exhibition and Gina took part in Emma Hedditch’s project ’We’re Alive! Let’s meet!’. It’s practically a reunion! One of the most amazing things about that exhibition was that we all got to install our work while Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether played in their Reverse Karaoke tent – who needs a radio when you have got the real thing?
Hayley's piece MiniFlux in the Her Noise exhibition
Kaffe's Sonic Bed in the Her Noise exhibition
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Hayley has produced more great lyrics for another song. This time in the guize of that sponge rolled ice cream delight of the 70′s, Arctic Roll. We used to get it for a school dinner treat on all too occasional Fridays. I go off to investigate if it’s still available and sure enough Iceland have it for £1 a pop although I did get momentarily distracted by the apparent take over bid of the Strawberry Roulade, swissed up Arctic Roll it seems. We’re in the recording studio at the weekend so I’ve got to get a move on with the song .
My plan is to use its E numbers to write the melody, but my midnight melting ice experiments sound so sweet that a translucent melody appears as tri-layered blocks of ice chords to sing. Lets hope the girls go for it.
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We are very sad to hear about the death of Alexander McQueen. His designs inspired our up-cycled costumes.
The collection that inspired our costumes
Initial costume trial
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Cut down in our prime by hecklers! A gang of three of em’. Blimey, I had no idea about heckling. A speakers corner baptism by fire. Haven’t been there for 15 years and had forgotten about this age-old tradition. Sitting ducks we were, but we took it on the bill, eventually getting our answers together, and fighting back. Theatre, drama, fireworks and confrontation; oppositional all the way. The hecklers were climate skeptics who wanted to eat strawberries in winter and accused us of being capitalists. That combined with the guy next to us who was spouting forth (in a derogatory fashion) about women’s gym bodies, made it quite a hostile environment for female newbies. Strangely, we were also asked which religious organisation was paying us to be there.
Our arguments were based around oil and food and becoming a conscious consumer. Of making ethical decisions about what we buy, combined with statistics to do with food waste….. no one said that trying to find a political voice was easy.
All too often these goods hide so much; not only the exploitation of consumers and inequalities within the society we live in, they often also hide child labour or the poverty of the workers who made these treats affordable to us. Those same workers, suffer a double bind… not only do we use their labour to resource our lifestyles, but our lifestyles contribute the climate crisis that displaces and causes the death of thousands of them.
At the end we talked with a couple of the other speakers, who welcomed us back with open arms. I was told it takes about 2 months to earn your chops on the corner. The question now is, do we want to go back? Billy Bragg was there just after us today talking about his decision to withhold his taxes until bankers bonus payments are curbed, he seemed more composed than us newbies, but perhaps he is still earning his Speakers Corner chops too?
Billy Bragg at Speakers Corner
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We videoed some spoken-word lyrics on the tube and on the back seat of a bus today. Some of the lyrics were from our dessert Madness (Sanity is obviously the preferable pudding);
The end, the end,
The end it is my friend,
Greenland and ice,
Grim reaper and dice.
A jolly ditty, written in a moment of ecstasy and oneness with the world.
We all had tantrums to camera on the central line. They were such fun to do and I can fully recommend having a go, BUT we were all wiped out emotionally afterward.
So the next plan is to film more at Speakers Corner this Sunday, where we will be telling the dastardly tale of Cop15. We desperately need some content! I know! Just haven’t had the time to formulate it.
Coming to a cinema near you soon…
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