Dear Group. Not sure if I am OK to share something in this group as member. But this text came from a gallery in Copenhagen that I follow. I find it inspirational and perhaps some of you might too:
NEW BOOK RELEASE and RECEPTION
CLIMATE THANATOLOGY: COMPANIONING WHAT REMAINS
by Heidi Hart
Really Simple Syndication Press, 2022
SixtyEight Art Institute is now releasing Climate Thanatology: Companioning What Remains by musician, researcher, and curator Heidi Hart. This book is a hybrid curatorial research memoir tracing the process of linking music practices for end-of-life care to climate grief through sound, visual art, performance, and participation. This curatorial process and methodology transforms grief practices into a source of collective inspiration and criticality in a warming world. On 6 October, SixtyEight will host a book launch event. The author will be signing books with informal conversations, drinks and snacks. Save the Date: 6 October. From 18:00 Place: SORTE FIRKANT (Blågårdsgade 29, 2200 Copenhagen) You can purchase the book in advance for 6 October through this LINK and pick it up at the reception.
ABOUT THE BOOK Climate Thanatology documents an artistic laboratory in process as a curatorial research project developed by Heidi Hart between 2020-2022. The book considers an assemblage of visual artists, musicians, actors, and activists creating collective strategies for climate grief. Heidi Hart brings her background as a literary writer, musician, and academic researcher into this hybrid text that reflects the oscillating process of developing a project through material experience, scholarship, and collaboration. The Climate Thanatology project grows from the practice of music thanatology, or end-of-life care, through musical responses to the body, where harp music responds to heart and breath rates, encouraging anxiety relief and contemplative presence in hospice environments. In extending this practice to climate grief through visual art, sound, and theatre, this program creates a living framework using ecological rhythms as a tool. Music thanatologist Catharine DeLong’s work responding to the Great Salt Lake with her harp informs her live and recorded music in project events. Climate Thanatology highlights include a Death Café for the World As We Know It with live harp music in response to human expressions of grief and hope; paper designed with water collected near ecological stress zones by Lana Neilson; a Lost Species Walk to embody collective engagement with the nonhuman, with activist Ash Sanders and artist Julia Adzuki; a Grief Shrine installation by Anne Louise Blicher; and a shadow-art theatre performance about endangered species titled The Bird Ladies, by HenBlakstad Productions and Animalske Produksjoner, with sound art by silo portem. As a curatorial text, Climate Thanatology serves as a reflection and guide for creative efforts to respond to the climate crisis. The project’s goal is not to remain in a state of mourning but to create a pause in habitual mindsets to allow new imaginaries to emerge. Community building throughout the project counteracts individual grief and anxiety by gathering collective energy. Through visual and acoustic artworks, art-based theatre, and participatory engagement, the project demonstrates how therapeutic practices can be applied to artworks and how art can influence creative adaptations to a warming world. Climate Thanatology: Companioning What Remains By Heidi Hart Really Simple Syndication Press, 2022 128 Pages Various Illustrations English Edition Designed by THE WINTER OFFICE ISBN 978-87-972365-3-6 120 DKK / 16 EUR
AUTHOR*S BIO Heidi Hart is an arts researcher and curator based in Denmark and in North Carolina, US, with a focus on sound and music in environmental art. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a Ph.D. in German Studies from Duke University (2016). Heidi's grants and awards include an ACLS-Mellon fellowship and a Pushcart Prize for poetry. She has published monographs on Hanns Eisler's activist art songs and on music in climate-crisis narrative, as well as numerous articles on sound in environmental art, film, and literature. Heidi serves as an Art and Humanities Research Fellow at SixtyEight Art Institute in Copenhagen and as a Nonresident Senior Research Fellow in the Environment & Climate sector of the European Center for Populism Studies. In 2022-23 she will complete a research project, "Instruments of Repair," with Craaford Foundation funding through the Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, Linnaeus University, Sweden.
SixtyEight Art Institute is an artistic/curatorial research organisation looking to uncover, develop, and further exchanges between artists and curators and their creative labour. See our current exhibition The Late Shop on view from 9 September to 14 October 2022. This exhibition is part of our two-year programme of exhibitions, Memoirs of Saturn, which is kindly supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Det Obelske Familiefond, Beckett-Fonden and Københavns Kommune Rådet for Visuel Kunst.
Wow. how amazing. Thank you so much