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Climate change documentary – Where are we now?

A documentary film from our HOME-zero winner addressing the need for sustainable social housing
20 September 2022
In A sustainable future
2 min read

Climate change documentary – Where are we now?

The next phase in our project that uses arts to shift mindsets and inform the public about the significance of household emissions.

Love Ssega was the winner of HOME-zero project. As well as his exhibition at the National Gallery, the artist has collaborated with filmmaker Darius Shu to create a film, Where Are We Now…?

Darius Shu, whose work has appeared on Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Channel 4, lends his unique documentary style to the film, blending with Love Ssega’s original direction and musical score. The film features an all-Black ensemble cast and tackles the call for sustainable social housing, as told through movement, poetry and music. The aim of the film is to help further spread the message of the HOME-Zero project and Love Ssega’s unique take on climate action.

Transcript

Love Ssega: Hi, my name is Love Ssega, and on Earth Day 22nd of April 2022, I composed and directed a promenade performance in three of the largest rooms here at the National Gallery with an all-black ensemble cast called Love Ssega's Home Zero, the performance.

First performer: [quiet, overlayed over gallery sounds and music] Got into the sorting movement – they set up, they repurposed these spaces and set up venues. They set up advice centres for the local community. They set up spaces where people who had been marginalised and who had experienced racism in so many different ways were able to come and feel at home in some way – from, you know, parties to more informative spaces.

Second performer: What does home really mean? The age of the global citizen. Many never seem to make home, and the hole inside seems so resistant to fill in. What does home really mean? What does it mean to belong? What does home mean? What does it mean to belong? What does home mean? What does it mean to belong? Surely it won't be too long before you find yourself inside a tribe whose eyes light up at your arrival and eyes grow close to crying and goodbyes. What does home mean?

[Percussive music and expressive dance performance]

Third performer: To be born in a box room is a burden to the soul. A hand on a thermostat holds power. Elders talk of past times immigration from hot shores to frostbite. This fuse high, is it tower block or penthouse? And we escape a room where the four walls meet.

[Electronic music and dance performance]

Love Ssega's climate justice film

Love Ssega is a musician, artist and current Arts Foundation Music For Change Fellow 2022. Having started as the original frontman of Clean Bandit, Love Ssega has gone on to work with Philharmonia Orchestra, tour China as a Musician in Residence for British Council and release music with Parisian fashion house Kitsuné. As a visual artist, he has collaborated with Slow Factory in New York and is part of their debut MoMA PS1 exhibition.

In recent years, he has turned his considerable talents to campaigning for climate justice. As a culmination of this activist work, Love Ssega was commissioned by Nesta and National Gallery X (National Gallery and King’s College London) to create Love Ssega’s HOME-Zero. The HOME-Zero project consisted of a live promenade performance at National Gallery and a workshop involving Londoners aged 18-35 years. The aim of Love Ssega’s HOME-Zero was to highlight the connections between the climate emergency and the social housing crisis.

The opinions expressed in this video are those of the contributors. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors. 

Part of
HOME-zero: our creative challenge for a sustainable future

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