Climate Frequencies is a five part podcast series exploring climate change through sound, presented by Natalie Sharp and brought to you by BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art.

As the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) gathers in Glasgow, listen to the climate emergency and its reverberations through the ears of artists, thinkers and activists.

Climate Frequencies is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

Climate Frequencies is a new series of the BALTIC Podcast that listens to the climate emergency and its reverberations through the ears of artists, thinkers and activists.

In this episode, musician and artist Natalie Sharp heads deep into the bowels of the earth to listen to the rocks and minerals forged in the substrata.  She asks how they might influence our idea of time, how we think about our past, present and future, and if they even have the potential to heal us.

Sound artist and musician Kelly Jane Jones reflects on our connection to the natural world through the sound resonance of rocks. Author of Notes From Deep Time Helen Gordon discusses how geology allows us to step back into our planet’s history to draw lessons on how we might approach the changes in climate. Architects Miriam Hillawi Abraham and Nasra Abdullahi share their time-travelling short story from the perspective of the rock formations in the east African rift.

Presented by Natalie Sharp. Produced and sound designed by Femi Origun-Williams and exec produced by Alannah Chance for Reduced Listening. 

Musician and artist Natalie Sharp heads just below the surface and into the soil and asks if we can cultivate care in our relationship to land.

In this episode, musician and artist Natalie Sharp thinks about the soil crisis, land ownership, our relationship with the land and how communities are fighting against extractivist corporations not only for land access and ownership, but for their ancestral relationship to the soil itself.

Artist Jade Montserrat discusses her video work Clay, Peat and Cage and talks to creative climate-justice activist Suzanne Dhaliwal about access to land and how local communities can fight back against extractivist companies and governments. Artist Emily Hesse explores our connection and relationship with land, sharing her text Inhabit. 

In this episode, musician and artist Natalie Sharp travels deep into the heart of the Amazon rainforest to listen to the chorus of its inhabitants. She thinks about the effects the destruction of rainforests is having on the planet and asks if listening to the sounds of these unique ecosystems can change our perspective on the climate emergency. How could an interspecies alliance – an alliance between humans and non-human entities – combat the forces of destruction?

Sound artist David Monacchi and urbanist-architect Paulo Tavares discuss their experiences of documenting the destruction of rainforests in South America and the impact on both human and non-human inhabitants. Artist and writer Maria Tereza Alves reads from her book, Recipes for Survival which considers the effects of the timber industry on her hometown in Brazil. 

Recipes for Survival includes content listeners may find distressing.

In this episode, musician and artist Natalie Sharp enters the veins of the planet: its rivers, waterways and oceans. Artist Carolina Caycedo discusses the effects that large dams have on ecosystems across the globe; whilst legal expert Erin O’Donnell talks about the fight to grant rivers the same rights as humans; and poet Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks us to consider what it might mean to become an apprentice to a marine mammal.

Presented by Natalie Sharp. Produced and sound designed by Femi Oriogun-Williams and exec produced by Alannah Chance for Reduced Listening.

In this episode, musician and artist Natalie Sharp considers the importance of clean air and its interconnectedness with climate justice. We hear from Chisara Agor – a multi-disciplinary musician and sound artist from London whose work raises awareness of UK air pollution and the intersections of class, race and politics – who talks to climate justice activists Nyeisha Mallett and Elizabeth Elizabeth Yeampierre of UPROSE in New York, an organisation that puts Black and Indigenous voices at the heart of the climate emergency. We also hear work by poet Daisy Lafarge, whose collection Life without Air ponders the fragility of air and its effect on both our psyche and the climate.