Between Crisis Imaginaries and Arts of Eco-Grief
2022 (English)Conference paper, Oral presentation with published abstract (Other academic)
Sustainable development
Environmental work
Abstract [en]
In the Anthropocene, the epoch of climate change and environmental destruction that render certain habitats unliveable and induce socio-economic inequalities and shared ‘more-than-human’ vulnerabilities, death and loss become urgent environmental concerns. As climate scientists indicate, in order to achieve UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs), a much more radical transformative action is needed from all stakeholders: governments, the private sector, communities and individuals (Höhne et al. 2020). Simultaneously, climate change, wars – as it is painfully manifested through the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine – and unsustainable living conditions contribute to the mortality and suffering of humans and nonhumans, destruction of entire ecosystems and populations, loss of biodiversity, the sixth mass extinction, and ‘slow’ – as well as very abrupt – environmental violence (Nixon 2011; Neimanis 2020; Åsberg & Radomska 2021). All of these evoke feelings of anger, anxiety and grief, manifested both globally and locally in popular-scientific narratives, cultural and artistic expressions, and environmental activism.This paper explores crisis imaginaries linked to more-than-human death, dying and extinction, as well as questions of ecological grief (or eco-grief), which the former are inherently entwined with. After unpacking the genealogy of the concept of eco-grief and its interlinked notions, I briefly sketch out the theoretical framework of Queer Death Studies, which this presentation is grounded in, and subsequently I look at several examples of contemporary bio-, eco-and media art that mobilise and – at times – subvert the notions of and mourning the more-than-human.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022.
Keywords [en]
Eco-grief, art science, bioart, queer death studies, mourning, death, the more-than-human
National Category
Visual Arts Other Humanities not elsewhere specified Cultural Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-190988OAI: oai:DiVA.org:liu-190988DiVA, id: diva2:1725421
Conference
RIXC SPLINTERED REALITIES: Art and Science Festival and Renewable Futures Conference, 6-8 October 2022, RIXC, Riga, Latvia
Projects
Ecological Grief, Crisis Imaginaries and Resilience in Nordic Lights
Funder
Swedish Research Council Formas, 2022-017282023-01-102023-01-102023-01-19Bibliographically approved