D.E.A.D.line
(2025)
author(s): s†ëf∆/\/ sch/\efer
published in: Research Catalogue
Experimental article for the Performance Philosophy journal Vol. 9 No. 2 (2024): With the Dead: Performance Philosophy, Dying, and Grief.
Abstract:
The last years the so-called phenomenon “glacier funerals” has appeared and spread globally with the most famous one happening in Iceland (Ok-glacier) in August 2019, followed by amongst others, funerals in Switzerland (Piezol glacier), Mexico (Ayoloco glacier) the United States (Clark glacier). It is one way to cope with ecological grief, an emotional response to the (future) impact of so-called anthropogenic climate change. The funerals differ in execution, but they remain rituals usually performed for humans and are “projected” on glacial beings. This works powerfully for creating awareness of glacier loss and climate change as such. The declared deaths of the glaciers are defined as the loss of the status as a glacier by scientists and are measurable. In this article, I am in for a search for a way to emerge rituals with mountains and glaciers as collaborators, based on a rather personal, partly autobiographic, artistic, and poetic approach, which leads to a better understanding of caring for a mountain and a glacier and bridges the gap between abstract measurable knowledge and a public in a way that it makes the impact of anthropogenic climate collapse sensible.
Sustainability in Performing Arts Production
(2024)
author(s): Johanna Garpe, Camilla Damkjaer, Markus Granqvist, Gunilla Pettersson Thafvelin, Anna Ljungqvist, Anders Larsson, Synne Behrndt, Mihra Lindblom, Anja Susa, Anders Aare, Anders Duus, Jon Refsdal Moe
published in: Stockholm University of the Arts (SKH)
The purpose of this project is to explore how we can minimize the climate impact through the way we plan, produce, and support performing arts productions.
The overarching research question was: How can we continue to create relevant and innovative performing arts with a smaller climate impact?
The faculty in performing arts at Stockholm University of the Arts worked with Harry Martinson's Aniara from their various disciplines.
Repurposing Rage (or Rage Re-Boot)-- How Audience’s Outrage Supports Generative Processes in Theatre Making
(2023)
author(s): Nina Marlow
published in: Research Catalogue
This thesis explores process driven creation of new work over five months (April 2023 - August 2023) in Finland. Process included meditation in nature and performances of OUT RAGE, which asked audiences to participate by sharing a concern –outing a rage– with an eco-punk astral messenger. Final products were audience inspired potential products that integrated the overall process, including performance observations and reflections. As a theatre maker with an interest in social and environmental justice, I am invested in creating new work that speaks to the current human condition of our lack of agency on a dying planet. Embracing the certainty of global warming on a human scale, acknowledging anger in society without inciting violence, and then creating new work informed by a collective of participants are at the core of this thesis.
Making museum repositories greener
(2023)
author(s): Tanja Kimmel
published in: University of Applied Arts Vienna
Tanja Kimmel (Institute of Conservation and PhD candidate Doctoral Programme in Philosophy) addresses the question of how art collections and conservation can become sustainable in her contribution "Making museum repositories greener". Sustainability poses a challenge for the art sector. While museums serve as role models for society and can thus contribute significantly to the discourse, they also have very high energy consumption and CO2 emissions due to their complex climatic technology. Kimmel mentions current initiatives and sustainability concepts of museums in Austria and abroad and discusses a case study featured in her dissertation that conducts a CO2 assessment of the central storage of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien in order to create the first profound data basis on climate-damaging emissions, which will then facilitate further action.
/\/\o\/ing \/\/i†h /\/\ount/\ins. Scores and invitations, set 1.
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): stefan schäfer
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This is a first set of scores and invitations for performers to train with, mountaineers and hikers to use during a mountain visit, students and teachers to start a wide range of discussions about ethical approaches when working with more-than-humans, climate change, commemorative rituals in relation to mountain or landscapes in a broader sense. They can be used in practice and at the same time operate as discussion starters. The scores have been developed in collaboration with the hoch\/ogel /\/\oun†/\in (AU/DE), starting from field work consisting of daily visits to the /\/\oun†/\in in July 2024. Afterwards I shared finding of the excursion with the Embodied Knowledge Research Group of the Lectorate of Theater and Dance at the Amsterdam University of the Arts and formulated this first set of scores and invitations. The set includes characteristics, environments and movements of /\/\oun†/\ins and rockslides in order to perform those at any location. For geological characteristics and movements I reached out to the Technical University of Munich Landslide Research Department who observes, and researches the hoch\/ogel /\/\oun†/\in and its movement and transformation. They provided me with articles and invited me to a course and an excursion. Altogether forms the base for the scores. The scores and invitations are a continuing part of my research with which I contribute to "Landscape Translation" (Pitches, 2020) within the field of performance as well as to artistic research methodology, design methodology and mountaineering. Landscape Translation is the conceptual meeting point between two perspectives of training regimes depending on /\/\oun†/\ins, "either conceptually (as places for training to occur), or formally (as inspiring shapes, figures and metaphors) (Ibid). My contribution focuses on acknowledging the temporality and constant transition of a /\/\oun†/\in and an intimate, reciprocal relationship with the /\/\oun†ain. This set is one of many shapes of how to share these kind of experiences, emotions, relations with other audiences. To outline an ethical and just position the scores and invitations incorporate amongst others the following features of ontologically-oriented-design (Escobar, 2018). They can be seen as hands-on invitations to act in either a /\/\oun†/\in site or any other space. With the development of the research, new features will be added and some of the existing ones might be be adjusted. Ontologically-oriented-design: - promotes convivial and communal instrumentations involving human/nonhumans collectives provoked into existence by ecological breakdowns or shared harm. It imagines designs that take seriously the active powers issuing from nonhumans, and it builds on the positive ontology of vibrant matter, realizing that design situations always involve encounters between human and nonhuman actants of all kinds. - always entails reconnection: with nonhumans, things in their thinghood (adding persons in their personhood), with the earth, with spirit, humans in their radical alterity (decolonially, considering the inclusion of multiple worlds, rather that exclusion). It contributes to dismantling dualisms and take seriously all forms of nondualist existence. Enables ontologies of compassion and care. - explicitly contributes to creating the languages that create the world(s) in which people operate in the creation of domains of conversations for actions, it necessarily moves from design to experience and back - is not a(bout) straightforward fabrication but modes of revealing; it considers retrieving forms of making that are not merely technological (going beyond techno-rationalism), while embracing new creations. It may do so by looking at the entire range of design traditions (within the West and beyond) non-eurocentrically and decolonially. References: Escobar, A., "Designs for the Pluriverse. Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds", Duke University Press, 2018. Pitches, J., "Performing Mountains", Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. (2025-07-14)
/\/\o\/ing \/\/i†h /\/\ount/\ins. de\/eloping co/\/\/\/\e/\/\ora†i\/e ri†uals in coll/\bor/\†ion \/\/i†h †he "dying" hoch\/ogel /\/\oun†ain
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): stefan schäfer
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This paper has been presented at the SIEF ethnography and folklore studies conference 2025 in Aberdeen. For the panel "Unwriting mountain worlds: beyond stereotypes and anthropocentrism". I decided to pre-record reading my paper and present it with a 22. minute video edit of my fieldwork in the summer 2024.
Within the context of the global climate crisis, mourning rituals concerning ecological loss, or future ecological loss of a landscape have gained attention in the last couple of years. In 2019, Iceland held the first glacier funeral for the dead glacier Ok. Almost at the same time, people in Switzerland went on a funeral march to the Pizol glacier. Since then, glacier funerals have been spread globally with the intention of raising awareness for the global climate crisis. Death and commemorative rituals are in this context a powerful manner to do so. A part of the rituals remains pre-dominantly Western and are for a big part copy-pasted around the globe. For example, the text from the plaque in Iceland got translated into Spanish and placed on the remains of the Ayoloco glacier in Mexico. The performed rituals are usually held for other humans and projected on a landscape. Although I understand the benefits, I find both aspects also problematic. First, the predominantly Western-eurocentric rituals, like wearing black, imply a colonialist dispersion of commemorative ritual across the globe. A “one funeral fits all” approach is rooted in a capitalist funeral industry. I claim for rituals emerging in and with a mountain. Characteristics of, and relations with the mountain are essential in this process. Second, the sheer projection of rituals for humans on a mountain keeps up the widespread Western idea that the human stands above nature. I know these points are not the intentions of glacier funeral initiators’, and I am grateful for and inspired by what they do. But my motivation for this paper derives from the mentioned concerns and lead to the following questions:
Regarding a potential “one funeral fits all” tendency which is based on predominantly Western-Eurocentric rituals following a universalist “One-world-world” view, how could and why should rituals for mountains and glaciers operate as counter-perspectives on this tendency?
Considering (future) ecological loss, how can features of ontological design provide methods to emerge commemorative rituals in, with and from a dying landscape, in this case the “dying” Hochvogel mountain?
The Museum of Lost Ecologies
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Celestína Minichová, Puck Verras
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
(Nordic) LARP exploring potentially disappearing ecologies and non-human narritives/narrators through role-playing in a site-specific setting. An artistic research project into connection with the other, the non-human, the beyond-human. Narrative found through site and relics we create, world co-created by participants through (role) play.
Science in the Anthropocene: A transdisciplinary visual exploration in the Icelandic Westfjords
(last edited: 2025)
author(s): Elisa Debora Hofmann, Benjamin Hofmann
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In the Anthropocene, human activity is the driving force of environmental changes, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. This exposition combines visual arts and social sciences to explore what roles science can play in navigating these changes in the Westfjords, a peninsula in the Northwest of Iceland. It presents five objects to tell place-based stories about science and to identify its potential contributions to resilient and thriving human-environment relations.
Future in the past
(last edited: 2024)
author(s): Nataliia Burmaka
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
I explore the concepts of alternative histories and possible climate changes in my series “Future in the past”.
I experiment with different elements in order to create thought-provoking works that challenge the viewer's perception of the world. Through my artworks, I seek to create an illustration of " what would or was going to happen" to refer to the future from the perspective of some point in the past. That point in the past was when Earth was a water world with no dry land.
My visual designs of “Future in the past” series are both abstract and illustrative. One of their key focusses is vertical lines and unusual forms, as if suggesting the idea of an alternative perspective of growth–trees that didn't come out of water and how it changed their look. It is much about creating an entirely new world around us. I strive to create a stylization of underwater landscape, bridging together the familiar and the strange, searching the aesthetic in unusual forms.
I aim to encourage the viewer to contemplate the paths ahead and the possible influence of climate change on our organism and nature forms in general.
Exit earth
(last edited: 2021)
author(s): Ashley Booth
connected to: Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
In the Exit earth project, we wish to investigate how can pictograms be used as a language for social/environmental statements and opinions?
Pictograms are simple signs that relay their information effortlessly. We are surrounded by thousands of them each day as the friendly couple on the doors of public toilets, on your smart phones and computers, as weather maps and road signs. They are there to inform or warn, or sometimes just to be decorative. Pictograms are becoming more and more popular, we see them, use them and make them, they are our helpers and supervisors presenting information. Pictograms are also responsible to the ideology of international language (beware slippery floors, Tidyman, Exit…). Isn’t that exactly what we need for the language of climate change?
The pictogram‘s days of slavery as pure bearers of information are over, they can now have an opportunity for self-expressiveness. Can they expand their obligations into newer fields of cultural identity and local expressiveness? Can they become opinionated figures encouraging us to challenge human values and discuss climate change? Build a global visual language that unites us?
By reusing and recomposing signs visually inspired by Margret Vivienne Calvert designs for UK road signs (1963) and ISO safety signs and ideologically inspired by the signs from Thierry Geoffroy picture series ‘TOO LATE’ we can create new climate comments and challenges.
The Colors of the Leaves of Maine
(last edited: 2020)
author(s): RUUKKU Voices: Patricia Tewes
This exposition is in progress and its share status is: visible to all.
This work concerns the colors of the state of Maine where I reside part of the year. The climate of Maine is similar to southern Finland. The colors of Maine are the deep blue-green conifers covering the mountains, the clear ultramarine of the sky and the even darker ocean, the reds, oranges, and grays of the rocks, the almost day-glo green of the lichens on dark trees shining on a rainy night, and the transparent whitish gray of the fog. I have asked myself the question, if the temperature warms, no, when the temperature warms, how will this change? The vegetation will change, the forests in the far north of Maine will change from blue-green conifers to mixed forests, and the mixed forests in most of the state will become warm broadleaf forests. Forests in Maine will look more like New Jersey or Delaware, a yellow-green vs the blue green of our pines. Many of the lichens will not survive. The sea level will rise, and some of coastal Maine will be flooded. We will see migration of both plants and animals, including humans, northward as the climate shifts. It’s already starting to happen.
In my work, I use these plants to assist my human hand. The human-plant interaction in the work reflects human-plant interaction in the world. My background as a medical doctor led to my interest in the concept of plants as medicine for the mind and body. I print and paint in multiple layers on canvas or panels mixing these found plant materials, collage, and human-made marks. I am fascinated by the unique marks that can be made with these organic materials. The fact that small elements of plant matter are incorporated into my paintings adds to this fascination. I reflect on the changing colors of these plant materials as the climate warms. I try to reflect that in my work, relying on the work of scientist who create mathematical models of climate change to speculate how the colors in a place might change. My current work is a series of paintings that uses these models to show in the leaves themselves how the colors might change. The place chosen is Acadia National Park in Maine. The plan for the work is to translate this model of the leaf to other places under threat of change due to climate warming. How will the colors and vegetation change in these places as the temperature warms? In using plants in my paintings I hope to create a link between the human viewer and the plant.
Perhaps my use of plants in mark-making can help us gain a deeper understanding of our relationships to the natural world and our commonality of DNA in a world in which we are increasingly in opposition to nature.
The purpose of this project is to explore how we can minimize the climate impact through the way we plan, produce, and support performing arts productions. The overarching research question was: How can we continue to create relevant and innovative performing arts with a smaller climate impact? The faculty in performing arts at Stockholm University of the Arts worked with Harry Martinson's Aniara from their various disciplines.open exposition comments (0)
Tanja Kimmel (Institute of Conservation and PhD candidate Doctoral Programme in Philosophy) addresses the question of how art collections and conservation can become sustainable in her contribution "Making museum repositories greener". Sustainability poses a challenge for the art sector. While museums serve as role models for society and can thus contribute significantly to the discourse, they also have very high energy consumption and CO2 emissions due to their complex climatic technology. Kimmel mentions current initiatives and sustainability concepts of museums in Austria and abroad and discusses a case study featured in her dissertation that conducts a CO2 assessment of the central storage of the Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien in order to create the first profound data basis on climate-damaging emissions, which will then facilitate further action.open exposition comments (0)
In the Anthropocene, human activity is the driving force of environmental changes, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. This exposition combines visual arts and social sciences to explore what roles science can play in navigating these changes in the Westfjords, a peninsula in the Northwest of Iceland. It presents five objects to tell place-based stories about science and to identify its potential contributions to resilient and thriving human-environment relations.open exposition comments (0)