In the Eye of the Storm: Fijian Spoken Word

Join us for the first VIBE Collective Leadership Development session, where we will be immersing ourselves “In the Eye of the Storm,” a 45-minute audio piece crafted by four Fijian spoken word artists, writers, and scientists, and narrated by a geolinguist.

This event is FREE and open to the public, and is meant for artists and creatives, although all are welcome! ‘In the Eye of the Storm’ is being shared in the partnership and blessing of the Fijian artists. After the event we will host a discussion about the piece, and our connection to Home.

“In the Eye of the Storm weaves together multiple stories and voices recounting the aftermath of Cyclone Winston, a super cyclone that hit Fiji in 2016. At the time it marked one of the strongest landfalls by any cyclone worldwide.

The aftermath of Winston is still felt today, with schools being housed in emergency tents, homes still waiting to be rebuilt, and crops still decimated. Underneath these struggles lie histories of colonization, of people taken by the British Empire from India and Asia as indentured servants or ‘blackbirded’ from the Solomon Islands by merchants to work on the Fijian sugar plantations. This legacy of colonization never ended, it saturates the present in the form of coercive international aid and trading agreements, the extraction of resources and expansion of capital, and in the unceasing disregard for the racialised impacts of man made climate change affecting frontline Pacific communities. It is this history, and this present, that the eye of the storm recalls.