/\/\o\/ing \/\/i†h /\/\oun†/\ins. De\/eloping co/\/\/\/\e/\/\or/\†ive ri†u/\ls in coll/\bor/\†ion wi†h the “dying” Hoch\/ogel /\/\oun†/\in

Hoch\/ogel, s†ëf/\n sch/\efer

This (experimental) 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 to the hochvogle mountain and the remains of ok-glacier in Iceland in the summer 2024. The whole panel can be watched here 

I recommend watching the videoclip but below you find the transcript: 

Introduction:

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?

Background:

Mountains are divers in their characteristics. For example, their shapes, materiality and stability. So are the factors that continuously transform them, like weather conditions, earthquakes or human impact such as mining or alpine tourism. Also, their relations with humans: spiritual, emotional. And who declares what a mountain is and when it is being alive, dying, or dead. Here the “temporality of the landscape” (Ingold, 1993) plays an essential role: at what temporality of the landscape do I enter? These are amongst others, aspects to consider when creating rituals with and in dying landscapes.

Characteristics, materiality and movement before, during and after a rockslide event at the Hochvogel mountain

The Hochvogel is a remote mountain situated in the eastern Allgäu Alps region. The summit runs above the German-Austrian border, 2592m above sea level. The mountain mainly consists of brittle dolomite rock. It is grey and feels like fine sandpaper. At the summit a “2–6m wide main crack divides the massif into a stable Northeast side and an unstable Southwest side” (Leinauer, et al., 2024). The gap is around 60m deep of which only 10-20m are visible when being at the summit. Loose rocks block the view and at the same time create pressure from inside the gap. The gap’s expansion is accelerating the last twenty years leading to an upcoming rockslide summing “up to 260 000m³” (Leinauer, et al., 2024). Causes of this acceleration are “a clear dependency of slope displacements on infiltrating water from rainfall and snowmelt and of rock fracturing on temperature. Both temperature and the availability of water are subject to climatic changes.” (ibid).

The slopes are horizontally layered and highly fractured which leads to pseudo-cubic forms of the rockfalls (Barbosa et al., 2024). It is difficult to forecast the exact time of the rockslide, but “the acceleration of the unstable mass even due to small environmental impacts proves a highly sensitive close-to-failure status, at least for parts of the summit” (Leinauer, et al., 2024).  

These are some visible and motional characteristics of the Hochvogel to include in the ritual in movements and visuals. As well as the different stages: before, during and after the rockslide event:

Before the event:

The mountain’s Southwest side slope slowly shifts away. But it accelerates.

The rocks inside the gap block the sight of the gap’s depth.

Expansion and contraction of rock material.

During the event:

A tremendous transformation in the mountains shape through the rockslide. A large massif falls and breaks into many smaller rocks.

After the event:

Horizontal layering and vertical cracking lead to pseudo-cubical, shapes spread across the Southeast side.

Temporality, a mountain’s death and (future) ecological loss

There is a spot on the instable Southeast side that will fall off, which is dear to me. The spot consists of two big rocks with a gap in-between. They are flat and I call them, although geologically wrong, “small plateaus”. They are almost equal in size as is the gap. This formation marks my first image of the crumbling summit since my first visit in the summer of 2019. The moment I entered the landscape and its temporality. The mountain is in constant movement and transformation, shifting its shape on various scales. Sometimes more, sometimes less perceivable to humans. But photos from 2009 and 2012/13 depict rocks where now is the gap. They might have been fallen off during a rockslide event reported in 2016. It looked quite different then compared to the moment of my first encounter.

Soon, the two big rocks will fall off too, break into smaller parts, move downhill and spread across the Southeast slope. To me, this event marks the mountain’s death, and I relate it to two aspects of ecological grief: First, “Grief associated with physical ecological losses, associated with the physical disappearance, degradation and/or death of species, ecosystems and landscapes, and is driven by climate change in several ways (…)” (Cunsolo, A., Neville, E., 2018). Second, “Grief associated with anticipated future losses. (…) is grief emergent from anxiety of, or preparation for, future losses and mourning for an anticipated future that will likely cease to be.” (ibid).

The moment of entering the mountain’s temporality and its momentary shape are curial when defining/ sensing its future death. When is a moment in its constant transformation perceivable enough for this and why is this relevant? In this case, the moment is defined by a tremendous change in the summits shape. Parts will disappear and consequences include the impossibility to visit this spot in this shape of the mountain. To me the relevance lies in attaining the awareness of the mountain’s continuous transformation in its own timescale and pace, compared to mine. The future death is something that I define. Others might share the same idea. It is nothing universal but something intimate. And something I have to cope with, the mountain might not care when the plateaus disappear. But I do. It lets me think about “care as an event”: before the rockslide, the rockslide itself and after the rockslide. Caring for the mountain includes a respectful contact in every manner. In my research I examine all three segments but for this paper I focus on the before. The reason for this is that my last visit to the mountain in the summer of 2024 was based on the before as well. In the next part I will describe methods towards commemorative rituals to cope with my future ecological loss of the mountain, including some of the Hochvogel’s characteristics.

Methods:

I will focus on four methods for this paper. They have partly been prepared before my daily visits to the mountain and partly emerged while being there.

1 Moving my body in, with and through the mountain: My daily visits to the Hochvogel summit consisted of hiking and light climbing. But also sliding, as in the first few days of my field trip, parts of the mountain have been covered in snow. I slipped away accidentally the first day and although I knew in my mind what I had to do to stop, my body was not able to translate this information into the right movement. S, I practiced by throwing myself into the snowfield to get this information into my body. Taking a planking position, headfirst, elbows and toes pressed into the snow, I could get some grip on accelerating and slowing down. I followed the path of a big rock that left a trace in the snow.

When the snow was gone it took the trace of my movement with it and made space for rock debris that lay underneath. While walking through this area now, I realised each step of mine the moves the rocks. I bring them out of balance and sometimes as they bring me out of balance. If all goes well, we find balance together and stand still.

As I mentioned above, the rock material feels like fine sandpaper. But at several locations on the way to the summit, there are spots that are dark grey and feel smooth. The look almost greasy. These are traces of humans touching the surfaces when climbing. At each spot it is clear if the rock has been touched with a right or left hand climbing up or down. The movement is signified by the rock formations and repeated by everybody who goes there. People who for a big part will never meet as the traces emerged over a time of approximately 250 years, according to the first mentioned climb.

2 Frottage (rubbing): collecting imprints of the mountain’s part that will break made in collaboration with the mountain through gentle movement. This surrealist method for creative production is simple. I laid a textile atop several parts of the disappearing part of the mountain. By rubbing the textile with a pencil and a text marker I got imprints of the surfaces. I did this daily and up to this point the three by one metre fifty metre textile is filled with several, randomly placed rock-surface formations. It is a very direct collaboration between the mountain and me, and other visitors who wanted to join the process.

3 An alternative “Summit register”: A lot of mountains have a book, the summit register. People can leave and share their names, date of the visit, and experiences. I made an alternative book to this calling it the “Hochvogel guest book”. I made the book at the mountain’s top, folding the paper with rocks up there. I used a simple saddle-stitch technique to bind the paper together. I wrote a short introduction to invite visitors to share their emotions on the upcoming rockslide and what they would like to say to the mountain. The book is still up there (I hope) and I am curious what people will have shared.

4 Hand-poke self-tattooing: A tattoo is a way to remember the deceased, weaingr the dead on one’s body. “The body becomes a memorial canvas” (Cann, 2015), and “the placing of the tattoo is important to the bearer” (ibid). I add to this that the location of the act of tattooing is important to me. I handpoke-tattooed myself the shape of the crack while being in there. The shape is outlined by two parts of the mountain, the one that will remain and the one that will break off. The air, surrounding, dust particles and the mountain’s energy are part of the tattoo. I placed the tattoo on my left index finger. This relates to the poking I did to the mountain while I used hiking sticks for the first time in my life. I stopped using them after three days when I realized the many traces of sticks in the rock surface. Caused by me and by others. The traces have the form of scratches and pieces recently broken off the rocks. This is visible by the blueish-grey colour in contrast to rather yellowish-grey colour due to dust. The hand-poke tattooing resembles the stick poking on a smaller scale. The small needle and the long stick. My thumb and index finger hold the needle; my hand held the stick before. The muscles and joints of my wrist move the needle, the joints of my shoulder and elbow and my arm muscles moved the stick. The scratches in the rocks and scrapers in my skin are irreversible. I can take the ink in my body with me, but not the scratches in the rocks.  

Conclusion: not a state- but an environment:

The methods relate to features of ontologically oriented design defined by anthropologist Arturo Escobar in his book “Designs for the Pluriverse” from 2017. According to Escobar, ontologically oriented design (o.o.d.) challenges the dominant Western world view (One World-World, OWW) in which there is one world only, and many cultures look at it differently. The problem is that the world looked at is defined from a purely Western, Eurocentric colonial perspective. So are the defined cultures. This view puts the Western defined human above any other entity like animals, plants, landscapes, in short Earth. Moving my body literally in, through and with the mountain body creates an intimate relation, I am temporally a part of it. We move together, each of us in our own pace. Our timelines meet for a moment. Together, we lose control. We lose balance. We jointly get it back. Just to lose it again. We slow down, speed up, are interdependent. I do not stand on top of the mountain I am a temporal extension decreasing the distance to the sky. O.o.d. “explicitly contributes to creating the languages that create the world(s) in which people operate” (Escobar, 2017). I added a “guest book for visitors” to the summit register and mentioned “bezwingen” (conquering) am mountain should change to “besuchen” (visit) a mountain.

It “always entails reconnection: with nonhumans, with things in their thinghood” (ibid), with our bodies. Our worlds. Human and non-human worlds. And should also leave this duality behind. It “enables ontologies of compassion and care” (ibid). The One World World view is exploitative and extractivist. My frottage works are a miniature example on how to take something from a landscape without literally taking something. The fabric is a collaborative result between the mountain, me and other visitors. With the tattoo, I carry traces and memories under my skin.

These are only a few examples of how to develop commemorative rituals with a dying mountain. One way of many in the pluriverse of how to cope with  (future) ecological loss, countering the “one funeral fits all” mountains and glaciers perspective. Acknowledging the temporality of a landscape, its materiality, characteristics, environment and one’s own relation with it. It sees the mountain as an equal collaboration partner and not some territory to conquer. By doing so, ontologically oriented design decolonizes design as well as death and commemorative rituals.

References

Barbosa, N., Leinauer, J., Jubanski, J., Dietze, M., Münzer, U., Siegert, F., and Krautblatter, M.: Massive sediment pulses triggered by a multi-stage 130 000 m3 alpine cliff fall (Hochvogel, DE–AT), Earth Surf. Dynam., 12, 249–269, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-249-2024, 2024.

Cann, Candi K. Virtual Afterlives: Grieving the Dead in the Twenty-First Century. University Press of Kentucky, 2014. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wrs5p.

Cunsolo, A., Ellis, N.R. Ecological grief as a mental health response to climate change-related loss. Nature Climate Change 8, 275–281 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0092-2

Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Duke University Press, 2017. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11smgs6.

Ingold, T., The Temporality of the Landscape. World Archaeology 25, no. 2 (1993): 152–74. http://www.jstor.org/stable/124811.

Leinauer, J., Dietze, M., Knapp, S., Scandroglio, R., Jokel, M., and Krautblatter, M.: How water, temperature, and seismicity control the preconditioning of massive rock slope failure (Hochvogel), Earth Surf. Dynam., 12, 1027–1048, https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-1027-2024, 2024. 

Leinauer, J., Weber, S., Cicoira, A. et al. An approach for prospective forecasting of rock slope failure time. Commun Earth Environ 4, 253 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-023-00909-z