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Central Asia is not being spared by climate change. In countries like Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan the glaciers are melting – but they’re not taking it quietly. A number of artists now joined in with the huge chorus. The result is Glacier Music.

The setting is an old Soviet bathhouse in the centre of Almaty. Visitors make their way to the sauna with towels and birch fronds. Ice is crackling, dripping and splashing. Artist Zoya Falkova wants to shake up the guests with this backdrop of sound and draw their attention to the melting glaciers in the region. The louder the better. The Kazakh is one of many sound artists who are creatively dealing with the death of the glaciers and who toured with their installations through four cities in Central Asia.



In Bishkek, Dushanbe, Almaty and Tashkent they presented nomadic flute music, a performance with refrigerator and gong, video art, sounds on Uzbek instruments and electronic beats. Mountains of sheet metal called Peak Stalin and Peak Lenin could be seen. It was a humorously enacted and thought provoking spectacle. The Berlin video artist Lillevan, DJ Teichmann and sound artist Alois Späth travelled from Germany to offer the festival musical support. All of it was accompanied by scientific lectures and workshops.



The festival was the resounding climax of the project Glacier Music, which began last July with an expedition when a team of 15 people, decked out with cameras and highly sensitive microphones, climbed the Tujuksu glacier to record the sounds of its melting. Artists from Central Asia transformed these into works of sound, an international jury chose the twelve best for further conceptualization. Under the artistic direction of Lillevan a variety of installations were created that were now presented at the Ilkhom Theatre in Uzbekistan and in the Kazakh bathhouse. Ice is crackling, dripping and splashing. “And may the glacier shout even louder,” calls a voice from the sauna.



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