Crying glaciers

Crying glaciers, vicious snaps of sea ice, squeals and crashes of ice calvings and fizzling growls of icebergs drifting…Verity Sharp delves into the ways artists have been coaxing a synthesis of voices from the Arctic landscape in a bid to share stories of environmental loss from the most rapidly-warming region on Earth.

Joining Verity Sharp is Pablo Diserens, a field recordist, musician and artist, who makes work 'in solidarity with a wounded planet, inviting people to attune to the present in an attempt at rethinking caring strategies and our relationship with the world and its biotic communities'. They are also a co-founder of record label and publishing house, forms-of-minutia, who over this year, have been celebrating the United Nation’s decision to declare 2025 the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation, via numerous releases from sound artists working across the Arctic, recording the sounds of journeys through melting zones, listening and recording the complex vocabulary of a landscape in retreat.

Besides exploring stories behind the making of these records, reflecting on what they’ve learned from the year of releases, Pablo offers Verity a sonic history of the ways people have been thinking about and tapping into the acoustic multiplicity of ice and documenting landscape and loss.

Produced by Cat Gough
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3