Composer Susan Campos—Fonseca and Chernobyl
In commemoration of the Chernobyl accidents (04.26.86) IGM presents Los niños gritan y casi ahogan, the new work by Susan Campos—Fonseca, written for soprano, guitar, and prepared piano. The piece is based on texts by the Danish writer Inger Christensen (1935-2009) and explores collective fears in the nuclear—atomic age. The video was created by Julián De La Chica, featuring original footage from Chernobyl, World War II, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The piece was composed for three young Costa Rican artists: guitarist Yanni Chavarría, pianist Nazareth Aguilar, and soprano and activist Yariela Salazar.
Read about Susan Campos—Fonseca and what inspired her to write the piece:
Children scream and almost drown out...
A prayer for a world without nuclear arms
"In memory of the victims of atomic bombings and as a prayer for a world without nuclear weapons" ... written in Japanese and Spanish, I found this statement at the Lankester Botanical Garden Research Center of the University of Costa Rica. I thought, —Monuments are erected on the remains of victims, as prophesied by the philosopher Walter Benjamín. Not only human victims but also non-human ones. Botanical gardens remind us of the need to conserve and study species on the brink of extinction, with the hope of reproducing ecosystems destroyed by the very species that seeks to conserve them.
"Peace Lantern," Lankester Botanical Garden Research Center, University of Costa Rica. Photograph by Susan Campos Fonseca, 2024.
Humanity is a creature of the greenhouse. The Danish writer Inger Christensen (1935-2009) left us a testimony of this in her poetry. For this reason, I chose verses from her poetry collection "Alphabet" (1981), produced during the height of the atomic age and the Cold War, published years before the "accident" at Chernobyl (1986), to construct this prayer. But my prayer is for the victims of war everywhere in the world, and for a wounded planet, Earth, crumbling under the indifference and greed of humanity.
"Children scream and almost
drown out the birdsong in the trees;
the birds sing and almost drown
out the whisper of the leaves in the wind;
the leaves whisper and almost drown
out with their silence the sky,
the sky that shines, and the light
that has almost since then resembled
the fire of the atomic bomb a little"
Inger Christensen, Alphabet (1981)
This is a prayer for peace, written by a woman looking out her kitchen window at children playing in the garden, while the nuclear mushroom cloud rises on the horizon... this is the prayer of a woman who goes out to cultivate the field, while radioactive rain falls on the earth... this is the prayer of children who decades later die of cancer and diseases that no one can explain... mothers and children who are shattered by drone bombings, controlled by men and women from distant cities... this is the prayer of resilient forests that stand tall while human beings kill and devour each other.
The lethal dust and ashes of Chernobyl rise once more, carried by the clouds to remote places; I feel them arriving with the storm.
"The children scream and almost drown," by Susan Campos—Fonseca (2023), final fragment.
I composed "Children scream and almost drown out" for three young Costa Rican artists, guitarist Yanni Chavarría, pianist Nazareth Aguilar, soprano and activist Yariela Salazar. They were born to people who, like me, lived through the tragedy of Chernobyl, in a world embraced by dystopia, thinking about the threat of atomic war. A generation that watched horror unfold on television and years later will live the same way, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the bombings of Gaza.
Today, in the midst of a climate crisis, in a world dominated by transnational corporations that control AI and genetic engineering, where colonialism and extractivism have depleted Earth's resources, looking towards other planets to continue, for that world, this prayer is offered.
Susan Campos—Fonseca
Composer