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Paper short abstract:

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies, this paper explores the aesthetics and ethics of present grief imaginaries and engagements with environmental violence, ecocide, more-than-human death, dying, and extinction, as they are interwoven through contemporary bio-, eco- and new-media artworks.

Paper long abstract:

We mourn humans, we mourn nature, we mourn the past. While the notion of bereavement linked to the death of a human or to the loss of that which has already passed is societally accepted or even expected from an individual, the mourning of nonhuman death and ecological loss has a rather different status. It is frequently described as ‘disenfranchised grief’: not openly accepted or acknowledged in society.

Simultaneously, in the present anthropocenic context, where climate change and planetary environmental destruction render certain habitats unliveable and induce socio-economic inequalities and shared ‘more-than-human’ vulnerabilities, death and loss become urgent environmental concerns. The killing of nonhuman populations, annihilation of ecosystems and species extinction mobilise discussions among scientists, politicians, legal experts, environmental activists, and general society, and also, increasingly pervade cultural imaginaries, narratives, and contemporary art. Works by visual artists such as Terike Haapoja, Brandon Ballengée, IC-98, Gwen Curry or Svenja Kratz open up spaces of rehearsing ecological grief and mourning.

Theoretically grounded in queer death studies and posthumanities, this paper explores present grief imaginaries and engagements with environmental violence, ecocide, more-than-human death, dying, and extinction, as they are interwoven through contemporary bio-, eco- and new-media artworks. It is there where an ecological ontology of death is being exposed and ethical territories of eco-grief unfold. While examining affective landscapes of select art projects, the paper argues for art’s unique potential for re-attuning our sensorial and cognitive coordinates to the demands of the more-than-human crises and transition times we have found ourselves in.