An upcoming project called The Herd, which involves dozens of animal puppets touring various African and European cities, is scheduled to launch in the spring of 2025 as part of a campaign to draw greater attention to climate change, according to a report by the Guardian.
Initiated by the same group behind The Walk, a 2021 performance art project involving a 3.5-metre puppet of a Syrian refugee girl, LIttle Amal, who travels across Europe in search of her mother, The Herd will start its tour in West Africa before moving on to other countries such as Senegal, the UK and Norway, which will be the final stop.
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One of the artistic directors of the project, Palestinian artist Amir Nizar Zuabi, said to The Guardian that climate change is “often presented in terms of emissions and the Kyoto agreement – people struggle to fathom that.” By using the animals puppets, Zuabi says the production team hopes it becomes “a visceral engagement with the issue.”
According to the artist, The Herd will consist of a core group of roughly 30 puppets that represent animals migrating from the African region known as Serengeti due to the climate crisis. As the tour continues, the plan is to have more migrating animals join the troupe.
“Animals are the early warning system of nature,” said Zuabi in a TED talk. “Although we live in a world with constant alarm bells and warnings, the urgency [of climate change] is not registering. We want to disturb the indifference”
Macao has not been immune to climate change, with typhoons and extreme weather events becoming more frequent. Earlier this month, the city’s local weather forecaster published modelling data that suggests the SAR could see its frequency of hot days increase twofold by the middle of this century.
