SOS Beniamina is an interactive 360º work filmed in an extraordinarily small, low-lying Solomon Islands seaweed-farming community.
Beginning with a view of the village children forming (in human letters) an “SOS” from their rapidly eroding island, users can move around a full 360º aerial panorama, clicking on hotspots to find documentary stories about Beniamina that relate to Pacific Ocean sea level rise, loss and damage, climate change adaptation, local resilience, and sustainable smallholder agriculture using carbon negative sinks. It’s a crucible of the issues underlying “climate justice”.
🏆 Winner, 1st prize, "Climate Change - The Grand Challenge” (Shylock University Theatre Centre of Venice in cooperation with Ca'Foscari University of Venice), 1 Dec 2023. Also, finalist, 2023 Climate Change Communication Award (Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change).
BACKGROUND
The Micronesian seaweed farming families of Beniamina (pop. 120) cling to a precarious existence atop a rapidly eroding sandy island, for the Solomons are a sea level rise hotspot: they experience 7-10mm/year, 3x the global average. The islanders' existence is centred around a crop which is carbon negative; yet their future is shaped a world away by emissions they are least responsible for. They lack finance for sea walls and reef balls to mitigate storm damage, revegetation and education. As Ban Ki-moon noted in February 2023, smallholder farmers produce up to 80% of the food in some parts of the world yet receive only 1.7% of climate finance: “What an injustice. If we want a world free of hunger while adapting to climate change, we need to put smallholder farmers at its centre.”
For more information, click on the hotspots on the 360 VR image. (Low resolution preview, above. All images © Adam Sébire, March 2023. This work was self-funded so please contact me if you’d like to license the work or any of the images. A film about Beniamina is in production, late 2023.)
Premiered at the Royal Geographic Society, London as finalist for the Earth Photo 2023 Prize, 15 June - 23 August 2023; and in Sydney, Australia as finalist for the Environmental Prize in the Head On Photo Festival 10 November - 3 December 2023.
ABOUT THE WORK
SOS Beniamina is a web-based 360º environment that invites viewers on computers, mobile devices or VR headsets to understand the extraordinary but precarious existence of Solomon Islanders living on the front line of a climate crisis they did not cause. Accelerating Pacific Ocean sea level rise laps at their feet as smallholder families there tend to their seaweed, a precious carbon sink.
The interactive texts address climate justice and how those least responsible for climate change are feeling the brunt of it. These Solomon Islanders farm seaweed: a sustainable crop that draws down CO₂ as it grows. Yet their home is existentially threatened by the effects of sea level rise, around 1 centimetre annually as the climate crisis worsens. The interactive 360º panorama begins with the beauty of this fragile atoll, capturing audiences' curiosity and inviting them in to explore.
The work borrows an early Renaissance technique (used by Hieronymus Bosch and others) known as the 'elevated vantage point'. Here, drone technology elevates our perspective above that of daily human experience to present us with a heightened viewpoint, suggestive of a moral choice. Indeed, today’s generation is the last that can choose to prevent catastrophic climate change; we already have all the tools we need. We perhaps need our own ‘renaissance’ in ways of representing & perceiving the Earth System’s fragility and interconnectedness.
SOS Beniamina was produced in collaboration with the island community, who asked me to create a work which would show the world the precariousness of their situation. (Within a few months of making the work the house behind the children was washed away; its family have become refugees.)
The work was self-funded after my PhD research into the visual representation of climate change was curtailed by Australia's border closures. It aims to help the community on Beniamina communicate loss and damage, as well as the very real limits of climate adaptation that they face as community in the post-colonial global South.
As a 360º project it requires engagement from the audience. English-language texts discuss
- sea level rise
- climate change adaptation and resilience
- climate justice in the Pacific Islands
- carbon sequestration via agriculture
- challenges faced by smallholders on the front line of climate change
I hope that an emotional connection with the islanders, and their island's beauty & fragility might lead audiences into an empathetic understanding but more to the point, to lead the urgent actions required of the global North to stop polluting, and to address the loss and damage our lifestyles have caused.
Some of Adam’s photos from the Solomons outside Sydney Opera House in Climate Outreach’s Ocean Visuals exhibition at Sydney Opera House, April 2023. Photo: Marnie Sebire
ACCESS
Initially the work is being premièred through exhibitions but I aim to bring it to the attention of teachers as an educational aid for students.
Teachers can access it freely here: https://momento360.com/e/u/3796b0eeaf9b4e3cac97785a2fc9d32b?heading=356.5&pitch=-57.32&field-of-view=64&size=large
For more works by Adam see ➔ ANTHROPO(S)CENE(S)