Q&A Susie Ibarra & Michele Koppes with Claire Sawers

Percussionist, composer and artist Susie Ibarra – who treated us to a thunderous solo drum set at Counterflows Festival 2018 – and Dr Michele Koppes – climate scientist, glacialologist and geographer – will discuss their project “Water Rhythms: Listening to Climate Change”, which will be shared as part of Counterflows at Home. Writer and commentator Claire Sawers will host this vital discussion.

Claire Sawyers is a freelance writer, living in Edinburgh, Scotland. Claire mostly writes about music and the arts, and has been published in The Times, The Herald, The Guardian, Resident Advisor, Haaretz and The Wire. She was previous deputy editor and music editor at The List magazine for five years.

Michele Koppes (Canada)

Woman standing on ice with snow and ice background

A keeper of the stories of ice and stone, Dr. Michele Koppes is a Canada Research Chair in Landscapes of Climate Change, an Associate Professor of Geography at University of British Columbia, the Director of the Climate and Cryosphere Lab and a Senior TED Fellow. Read more →

Susie Ibarra (USA)

Woman in blue cap next to a fast flowing stream

Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, percussionist, and sound artist. She creates immersive experiences through sound to invite people to connect to their natural and built environments. Susie is a 2020 National Geographic Explorer Storyteller, a 2019 Doris Duke United States Artist Fellow in Music, Senior TED Fellow and 2019 Asian Cultural Council Research Fellow in working to preservation and support Indigenous music and culture, Musika Katatubo, in the Philippines, and sound recording climate change with recordings of water rhythms from glacier melt in the Himalayas. Read more →