Calentamiento Global appropriates and transforms old Mexican soaps, a type of television program that is a widely spread format in Azerbaijan’s (and most of the world) popular television experience. Huseynov selected a series of unrelated clips and replaced the normal voice-over (translating the dialogue from Spanish to Azeri) with an own, newly made text. The personal drama from the original soap is replaced with an ironic, at times sarcastic, dialogue on climate change.

 

By employing a language that mediates between emotional, formal and scientific, the work feels surreal while being contradicted by emotional acting that evokes a strange sense of empathy. The often humoristic superimposition of this new dialogue onto a traditional soap-opera, unmasks the demagogic narrative of Climate Change throughout the political spectrum at large. It captures its ironic reality that moves between denial, facts and emotions.

Text: Bjorn Geldhof