CICC: Comrades Against Extinction
Stage / Music Procession
Toverin muistole
(In memory of comrades)
Title | Comrades Against Extinction
Concept | Radha D'Souza & Jonas Staal
Commisioned by | Studio Jonas Staal
Type | Stage / Music Procession
Date | August 2022
Location | Kansalaistori Square Helsinki
Architecture | Paul Kuipers
Graphic Design | Remco van Bladel
Project Coordinator | Nadine Gouders
Photography | Jonas Staal
Images process | Paul Kuipers
Text | Jonas Staal
Comrades Against Extinction
Comrades Against Extinction is an installation and musical procession develop by lawyer, academic, writer and activist Radha D’Souza and artist Jonas Staal, in collaboration with musicians Ánnámáret, Anni Elif, Ali Saad, and the Philomela Choir. The work consists of a large tower covered with paintings of animals that have been made extinct from the colonial period to the present, which was erected on the main Kansalaistori square, facing the national parliament.
During the inauguration of the tower, Ánnámáret, Elif, Saad and the Philomela Choir led a musical procession from the parliament to the square, carrying the images of the extinct, each termed ‘comrade’ in a different – sometimes extinct – language. The score, based on a script written by D’Souza and Staal, contains the names of the extinct, as well as slogans that declare intergenerationality, interdependency and regeneration as the pillars of our shared human and non-human struggle against extinction.