Category: 2018
Ponso No Tao: A Place for Living – by Tsai Tung Li
Tsai Tung Li
Ponso No Tao: A Place for Living
Paper, pencil, watercolour, collage 2018
The subject of extinction also touches on culture, environmental justice, and race. Even within the same ethnicity or country, there are huge differences between the culture where a person comes from and the culture where they live. This doesn’t only affect human beings – it is mirrored in the lives of animals in the wild and in cities. In my own country, Taiwan, this can be seen in the story of Orchid Island.
Orchid Island, or Ponso No Tao – ‘a place for living’ – is off the southeastern coast of Taiwan. The islanders are mostly aboriginal Taiwanese: Tao people, who work as farmers and fishermen living closely with nature. Tragically, Orchid Island is best known in relation to the issue of nuclear waste. A nuclear waste storage facility was built at the southern tip of the island in 1982. It continues to receive waste from Taiwan’s three nuclear power plants. Islanders did not have a say in the decision to locate the facility on the island. This happens in lots of communities in the world: often people don’t even have a chance to speak out. I am grateful to have a chance to bring it up here, whether it arouses grief, rebellion or simply awareness.
By conveying the messages of Lost Species Day through images and a story close to my life, I intend to create conversations with people of all ages. Trying to see things with a more childlike sensibility gives space for imagination. Choosing a flying fish as a narrator not only symbolises the aboriginal people but also gives a voice to this beautiful animal who cannot vocalise its suffering. My goal is to raise awareness of environmental injustices and create a conversation about the impacts of capitalism.
ARTWORKS AND EVENTS FOR RDLS 2018
Louis T. Fowler Endangered Species Ink Drawings.
The species’ disappearance are represented through ‘meandering, vanishing ink lines and trails’ (Louis’ website, link below).
Natee Puttapipat / Himmapaan
Drawing by illustrator Natee Puttappipat (@Himmapaan) for RDLS 2018.
Source: Lost Species day Twitter images / @Himmapaan
Sara Otterstätter
A new artwork created by artist/ illustrator Sara Otterstätter/ @SaraLutra, dedicated to Steller’s Sea Cow for RDSL 2018.
Source: LostSpeciesDay retweeted @SaraLutra (Sara Otterstätter)
Sonia Shomalzadeh
A 6 metre, subadult life-size drawing of Steller’s Sea Cow by artist Sonia Shomalzadeh. Here it is displayed on ONCA’s Barge for the RDLS Procession in Brighton 2018.
Source: LostSpeciesDay Twitter
Chicago (IL), USA: A Benefit Concert 30/11
A benefit concert that featured original songs about extinct animals by Chicago-based singer-songwriters. All the proceeds went to ‘Friends of the Chicago River’, a charity working to improve the health of the Chicago river system for people, animals and plants.
Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka: A Beach Ritual
A ritual was held on Hikkaduwa beach, Sri Lanka in praise of whales.
White Plains (NY), USA: A Congregation
A community Unitarian Universalist Congregation at White Plains, hosted by Revs. LoraKim Joyner and Meredith Garmon.
Falmouth, UK: A Film Screening
The documentary Albatross by artist Chris Jordan was screened in Falmouth. The film depicts the tragic occurrences of dead albatrosses with stomachs filled with plastic, reflecting on the destructive power of mass consumption.
(Info on film: https://www.albatrossthefilm.com/ourstory/)
Galway, Republic of Ireland: ‘Sing for our Planet’ meeting with Transition Tunes Galway 30/11
A meeting was held at St Nicholas’ primary school for an hour to remember and raise awareness of the plight of all the extinct and endangered species of the world. Poems, songs, music and silence were shared.
Amsterdam, Netherlands: Exhibition and Performances Exploring the Extinction of Birds
BirdScore is a collaboration between artist Jeroen van Westen (NL) and musician/artist Michael Pestel (USA). It involves an interactive set of multi-media installations, a choreographed/scored performance work, interlocking indoor and outdoor, and a strategy for local environmental research and interspecies communication with birds. Through these works, the artists look at the world from the point of view of the nearly two hundred species of birds gone extinct since the time of colonial expansion in the 17th Century, seeking to give voice to species we can no longer hear, and images to sights we can no longer see. Art meets science in this speculative area to explore a way in which to develop a cross cultural awareness for the interactive dynamics between nature and culture as a possible prerequisite for a sustainable relationship with and between all forms of life and habitats on this planet.
L
Detroit (MI), USA: Film Screening and Performance Event 30/11
A two part event consisting of a community potluck and film screening, followed by performances by Vness Wolfchild and Roo Gatsby. Guests were encouraged to dress as a species other than their own.
Singapore: Remembrance Gathering 30/11
People met outside in Singapore for rituals, song, primal movement and story sharing.
Image source: Florence Leung on the facebook event page
Leiden, Netherlands: Building a Life Cairn 30/11
A Life Cairn was built in Leiden, inspired by the Life Cairn that was built in 2011 by Andreas Kornevall and others on Mount Caburn in Sussex. Participants gathered and added stones to commemorate plant and animal species that will never be encountered again due to their extinction.
A stone was sent from the USA to Leiden to be added to the Life Cairn.
Somerset, UK: Poetry Reading 30/11
People gathered at the trig point of Cley Hill in England. On top of this 244m hill, participants shared a reading of the poem ‘Bestiary’ by Joanna Macy. The poem is an expression of grief for the loss of species, with an intention for people to know the depth of this sorrow so as to feel the depth of their belonging.
(http://www.earthregenerative.org/earth-empathy/hope-cat.html)
An extract of the poem reads:
‘The list of endangered species keeps growing longer every year. With too many names to hold in our mind, how do we honor the passing of life? What funerals or farewells are appropriate?’
Barcelona, Spain: Ritual Gathering 30/11
A ritual gathering with flowers, candles and instruments to raise awareness about the extinction of species, biodiversity loss and environmental crises in a non-aggressive and inclusive way.
Stories of lost species were told such as that of the last Pyrenean ibex (2000) and the last Pinta Island tortoise (2012), as well as a discussion on how to halt the sixth mass extinction by transforming society’s relationship with nature.
This event ran in support of biodiversity project ‘Nature Needs Half’ which aims to protect 50% of the planet by 2050. https://natureneedshalf.org/
Encinitas (CA), USA: Storytelling and Ritual 30/11
People gathered for a fire ritual and storytelling in commemoration of extinct species.
Germany: Steller Society Events Programme 2018
An international society that celebrates the work of naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller dedicated its 2018 annual programme of activities to Steller’s Sea Cow and Remembrance Day for Lost Species. Steller discovered the Sea Cow in 1741 around the Commander Island but it was driven to extinction by 1768.
Maui, Hawaii: Seaweed Mandala 30/11
Manitoulin Island, Canada: Ritual 30/11
Nature communicator Madii Kasem hosted an evening of shamanic teachings, stories and ceremony with special guest Debra Ann Tate, ‘remembering the loss of animals and plants while celebrating our power to co-create the world we want to live in.’
Muiderberg, Netherlands: Event of Art, Talks, Music, Ceremony 30/11
In Muiderberg an afternoon/ evening of talks, artworks, film, discussion, singing, a fire and a shared meal was held for RDLS. Participants created shell-like objects and lay them down after a silent ritual with an intention.
Totnes, Devon, UK: Building a Life Cairn 1/12
A Life Cairn was built on a hill overlooking the river Dart in Devon for RDLS. A procession took place to the site of the Cairn by a maple tree, with 160 flags painted with extinct species suspended from wooden sticks. Stones were then layed in honour of these species.
‘These are species that are never to give birth again, never to sing, dance, court, hunt or be the astonishing animate expression of our Mother’s deep dreaming… I can only explain this as the consequence of having stepped out of the web of deep belonging.’ Azul Valérie Thomé (participant).
Photographs by Kay Michael (source: facebook event)
Knysa, South Africa: ‘Art for Species’ Exhibition, 5 – 30 November
Inspired by and in support of Remembrance Day for Lost Species, an exhibition was organised by artists in South Africa to reflect on current endangered and vulnerable species. Several talks, workshops and guided walks ran alongside the exhibition. The exhibition and project was led by artist Janet Botes who is passionate about inspiring action in support of biodiversity.
The exhibition included the work ‘Floating Away’ by Ingrid Nuss.
More artworks and information on the whole project at: https://artforspecies.org/artworks/
Cape Town, South Africa: Beach Gathering 30/11
An all day beach gathering was held on Glen Beach for Lost Species Day with South African calligrapher Andrew van der Merwe. Having pioneered techniques in beach calligraphy, Merwe gave a sand scribing workshop before proceeding to record the names of lost species in the sand. As the tide changed, the water washed away the transient artwork.
‘Through their names we will remember’
Following sunset and the disappearance of the words written in the sand was a shared picnic, fire dancing and the lighting of the extinction symbol. Participants were invited to contribute in any creative way they felt inclined e.g. reading a poem, storytelling, drumming, sketching, sand art or simply grieving in silence.
*add photograph of burning extinction sign*
Brighton, UK: Evening Talks at a Museum of Natural History 15/11
The Booth Museum of Natural History hosted an evening of talks to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the extinction of Steller’s Sea Cow for Lost Species Day. Speakers included Michael Blencowe and Sarah Ward from Sussex Wildlife Trust and Matthew Stanfield, a Lost Species Day researcher from ONCA. Talks reflected on what we can learn from the demise of Steller’s Sea Cow to prevent the loss of today’s most treasured marine megafauna.
On display were fossils of the future – plaster casts from plastic created by children in a workshop at ONCA’s Barge.
Brighton, UK: Artist Residency and Exhibition at ONCA, 1/11 – 16/12
This year for Remembrance Day for Lost Species, ONCA hosted a residency for 3 POC artists to develop new work around the theme of racial justice, environmental justice and biodiversity loss.
The selected artists were Laurèl Hadleigh, Matice Moore, and Tsai Tung Li. They shared a studio space on ONCA’s Barge at Brighton Marina before exhibiting their work at ONCA’s main gallery. The final exhibition entitled ‘Some of Us Did Not Die’ was curated by Imani Robinson and entailed painting, illustration and video.
‘In conversation with the past, the future, and each other, the work explored strategies and connections required to survive our current apocalyptic conditions. Whiteness has framed racialized bodies and knowledge as expendable, inconsequential, or hazardous to the values of empire.
Brighton, UK: Zine Making-Workshop
ONCA Gallery supervisor, communications officer & art activist Susuana Amoah facilitated a zine-making workshop as part of the RDLS exhibition programme. Participants created colourful collages inspired by the 3 POC artists’ work in the exhibition Some of Us Did Not Die. The collages were arranged together in the final zines along with information on the residency project and Remembrance Day for Lost Species.
Brighton, UK: Beach Procession for Steller’s Sea Cow, 1/12
A ritual memorial for Steller’s Sea Cow. Starting on ONCA’s Barge, adults and children gathered to hear the history of the Sea Cow told by historian Matthew Stanfield with the company of a large Sea Cow model suspended from the ceiling.
In an open circle, participants shared something they wanted to grieve for, something or someone they wanted to make a promise to for the future and something they felt grateful for.
The sea cow was then carried through the shops and restaurants of the marina, down to the beach where it was set alight and burnt to the ground in ceremony.
Photographer Zoe Childerley documented the event:
Sea cow in the window of ONCA’s barge
Brighton, UK: Stories From the Sea at ONCA’s Barge, 1/12
A drop-in workshop hosted by artists Zoe Childerley & Beckie Leach McDonald involving ocean themed activities – imagining and collecting stories of the ocean environment and of extinct and mythical sea creatures. Activities included poster and zine making, the telling of myths and legends of the sea and space to commit positive action for the ocean.
Artwork ‘Manatee Resting’ by New York-based artist Jan Harrison
Brighton, UK: Talk on Extinction and De-extinction with Dr Sadiah Qureshi 29/11/18
Dr Qureshi’s talk was a whistle-stop tour of the history of ideas about extinction – from the discovery of fossilised megabeasts in the late eighteenth century to the present-day debates about de-extinction and the future of earth’s biodiversity. The talk was followed by an interactive activity: If you could, would you bring back an extinct species? If so, which one?
The event took place during the Some of Us Did Not Die exhibition at ONCA Gallery for RDLS as part of ONCA’s residency project.
Glasgow, UK: Zine Launch and Gig, 28/11
An event to launch a zine to raise awareness of RDLS and to raise funds for Sea Shepherd UK.
Special guests included: Richard Youngs, Claquer & Catriona McKay, Electroscope, Bell Lungs, Ego Depletion, Luminous Monsters, Burnt Paw and Juana Adcock.
Huncoat, UK: Campaign Launch, 30/11
People gathered at the footbridge of Huncoat railway station to take a photograph to use for their campaign to preserve the wildlife there.
Huncoat colliery became a wildlife haven for wildflowers and butterflies after it ceased to operate in the 1960s. 21 butterfly species are present at Huncoat Colliery, 13 of which are in decline, including 2 species classed as a priority in the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (Small Heath and White-letter Hairstreak). Huncoat Colliery has been earmarked for housing development which could be terrible news for local biodiversity, as we stand to lose an area rich in wildlife at a time when it’s more important than ever to protect the precious habitat we have left.
British Columbia, Canada: Walk for the Wild Things, 30/11
A walk from South Chesterman Beach to Frank Island to raise awareness of threatened and extinct animals as part of the International Remembrance Day for Lost Species. It was ‘a reflective opportunity to challenge the creative mind to act with hope in our commitment to nature.’
A beach fire was held afterwards at which Pacific Rim National Park warden Tanya Dowdall shared information about locally endangered species and plans to prevent extinction. A poem was also shared by poet Sherry Marr.
Wales, UK: Art installation, 19/11 – 28/12
Oriel Blodau Bach was previously an unused notice board and later became west Wales’ smallest contemporary art gallery.
For RDLS 2018, artist and co-founder of RDLS Emily Laurens exhibited her work featuring Steller’s Sea Cow.
More work by Emily Laurens:
A Steller’s sea cow diorama made from reclaimed materials by Wales-based artist Emily Laurens.
(Clay sculpture of Steller’s Sea Cow also by Emily Laurens.
Leleuvia Island, Fiji: Beach Art/ litter picking, 30/11
Plastic was collected on the beach and used to make sand art and earrings in memory of Steller’s Sea Cow and other extinct species.
Earrings by Anne O’Brien made from a plastic bottle found on the beach.
State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF), Syracuse, NY, 29 Nov
St Helen’s Well, near Market Weighton, Yorkshire, 7pm Nov 30: Yorkshire Life Cairn ceremony
Devon, UK: Artist led walk, 2/12
A walk through Tungsten mine in Devon with mythogeographic walking artists Crab and Bee to commemorate the last wolves of Dartmoor in the 1780s. The event was also to raise awareness of the ongoing habitat destruction on southern Dartmoor.
Syracuse (NY), USA: Day of events at SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry 29/11
ESF students, faculty and staff observed Remembrance Day for Lost Species Thursday, Nov. 29 to pause from their work and explore the stories of extinct and critically endangered species, cultures, lifeways and ecological communities.
Brian Ratcliffe, a graduate student was the principle organiser, curating a day of events centred around the themes of extinction, memory, emotion and community.
Events included:
–A grief and healing ceremony: featuring music, poetry, stories, ritual and food.
–An extinction gallery: a slideshow depicting species from the region who are endangered, threatened or extinct.
–A remembrance circle: space for people to leave flowers, stones, photos, drawings, notes, candles or anything else left in a spirit of honor and remembrance.
-Letter-Writing Campaign in Defense of the Endangered Species Act
Mural creation: student artists facilitated the collective creation of a mural made from rubbish which was to result in an image of an extinct species.
-Species appreciation walk: A student led a walk across the campus, pointing out plant species along the way and telling their storie
-Film screening of Black Ash Basketry: A Story of Cultural Resilience
Adrian Ventura
As part of his ‘sketch a day’ project, Adrian Ventura dedicated a sketch to the Vaquita for RDLS – a porpoise on the brink of extinction.
Tattoos
Charlotte Wrigley posted a photograph on twitter of her new tattoo depicting Steller’s Sea Cow to add to her collection of extinct species tattoos. (right)
Tattoo portrait of Martha, the last passenger pigeon for RDLS posted on Instagram (below) inspired by Kate Snowbird’s original painting.
London, UK: Drawing Session with Andrea Carr 30/11
‘Live drawing/ erasing’ at Studio 73
New work by artist and performer Andrea Carr. She drew the wild Atlantic salmon – a longstanding target of commercial fishing and habitat destruction – and then asked passersby in the street to rub sections of the drawing out.
Louise Pallister Louise Pallister posted a new print for RDLS 2018 on Twitter dedicated to the Thylacine, made extinct in 1936.
Brighton, UK: Remembrance swim
Cloe Ofori shared on twitter that she and others went for an ice cold swim in the sea in remembrance of Steller’s sea cow – reflecting on the “torture of extinction through the bitter cold of the water”. They then wrote pledges on stones and threw them into the water.
Svenja Meyerricks writing on ‘Remembrance, Lost Species and Parenthood’ for RDLS 2018
‘To grow a tiny person and nurture her with my body’s own milk was the most visceral reminder of my own mammalian nature and place in the wider biotic community.’
‘Moving beyond stuff and pets, the only meaningful way to love animals these days is to find our place in the wider biotic community once again with humility and awe.’
Full text here.
Sydney, Australia: thylacine office cushion
Simon from Sydney ‘drew’ a thylacine in sequins in his office’s cushion to mark Lost Species Day 2018 in hope that his colleagues would reflect on the reality of extinction with him.
Hapi and the Lost Species
Release new EP entitled ‘Human Nature Changes’ to coincide with RDLS.
Kate Tume/ Mother Eagle
New embroidery remembrance handkerchief series by Kate Tume. The first two are dedicated to the last Pyrenean Ibex (Celia, 2000) and Lonesome George, the last Pinta Island Tortoise (2012). Posted on Instagram.
Jill Bog
Jill created a new 2D video animation of Steller’s Sea Cow disappearing in the water for RDLS 2018 and posted it on Instagram.
Kat Lyons: poetry
Kat Lyons shared a poem she wrote thinking about extinction for RDLS on Instagram. The title is ‘Ghosts on My Tongue’
Chris Lochner
Chris Lochner exhibited his botanical illustrations of extinct and endangered plant species at Verge Exhibition in Australia which coincided with RDLS 2018. The image depicts The Pink Satyr, an endangered species of orchid.
Glasgow, UK: An Urban Dive 30/11
‘Urban Divers continued their research into climate destabilisation and marine biodiversity loss with a dive down Buchanan St, Glasgow. Wading through Black Friday remnants they searched for the 90% of large fish lost in the last 50 years due to human activity.’ (@LostSpeciesDay)
Essays c/o The Clearing
The Clearing, a UK-based magazine, recently published a special issue devoted to extinction and endangered life in honour of Lost Species Day. Here are the essays.
‘Tallgrass, by Robin Kimmerer’
‘Vultures on the Brink, by Anita Roy’
‘Words of Life, by Nicholas Evans’
‘On Extinction, by Tim Ingold’
‘The Broken Frame, by Pippa Marland’
‘A Dark Dim Smudge, by Melanie Challenger’
Extinction Witness VOW 2 ACT – by Megan Hollingsworth
The Vow 2 Act is a commitment to do what we can do because and while we can.
“Absolutely [global warming is] reversible. There’s no question about it … but hope has to pass the sobriety test and walk a pretty straight line to reality. Otherwise, it’s delusion.”
Paul Hawken, author and founder at Project Drawdown, Interview at Regenerative Development Conference
In 2014, Glaciologist Eric Rignot suggested that there may yet be a chance to slow down the West Antarctic Ice Sheet’s rapid irreversible decline and “a different level of communication” is required to translate the gravity of what he and his peers see.
The Vow 2 Act emphasizes that role modeling helpful action is the primary different level of communication needed. And is written by Extinction Witness founder and creative director Megan Hollingsworth as a practice response to Eric Rignot’s call.
The Vow language is grounded in the knowledge that the ecological health crisis is driven by a human health crisis. And awareness that the roots of the human health crisis are the spiritual crises of materialism, entitlement, and punitive judgment.
The results of brutal competition complicated by materialism are in. Whether or not we personally experience scarcity, this is a globally scarce moment that calls for compassionate intention, frugality, efficiency, and ingenuity.
Someone living in New York, where over 11,000 children under the age of 6 live in the shelter system, need not visit Yemen or Ghana to see the child’s deprivation brought by cruel socioeconomic practices generations-old.
While the words used and stories told matter, actions are effective only so far as the intention that forms the basis of the actions.
“ …Unfortunately, the Brazilian people, elite and masses alike, were generally unprepared to evaluate the transition critically; and so tossed about by the force of the contending contradictions, they began to fall into sectarian positions instead of opting for radical solutions.”
Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness, 1973
Vow 2 Act signatories vow to be a different level of communication by thought, word, and all other actions. This, a true “radicalization” of the individual toward truly radical solutions to collective ills.
Vow signatories commit to rebellion in the purest sense. Rebellion as honesty, compassion, and kindness.
Rebellion as the ability to see one’s own propensity for ignorance and refrain from ignorance. To see one’s own propensity for greed and refrain from greed. To see one’s own propensity for hatred and refrain from hatred.
Rebellion as the ability to practice compassion toward oneself and all others by thought, word, and hand that every expression and exchange display and promote compassion with kindness.
Sonia Boyce, decolonial artist, and her connection to lost species – by Cloe Ofori
Streaked Bombardier beetle photo c/o Craig Slawson, Buglife
Sonia Boyce, MBE is a British artist, activist, curator and academic whose work features decolonial, participatory and ecological themes. She began working in the 1980s and quickly became a central figure in the black British art scene at the time – in 1987 she was the first black female artist to be exhibited at the Tate.
Her work began as an exploration of self and her position and visibility as a black British woman in contemporary British society. From observations of her race and gender, Boyce’s work has opened up to become more collaborative, encouraging discussions of similar themes.
One piece of work that chimes with Remembrance Day for Lost Species is Boyce’s recent commission to work on the Crossrail Elizabeth line near the docks in the east London borough of Newham, the area where the artist grew up. It will be the longest artwork in the UK, a mural that stretches 1.8km through Custom House, Silvertown and Woolwich. The theme of the mural is a kind of local ecology. Earlier this year, she worked with local residents as part of the research process, through oral histories and knowledge evolving from pub quizzes. This cooperative process is a defining feature of Boyce’s work and feeds into a decolonial theme of art being created by the people it is for; grassroots rather than top-down.
Boyce has said that she is interested in place and “site specific” work. In her proposal video for the Crossrail mural which Boyce of course won, she cites the London docklands as “the gateway to Britain’s relationship with the rest of the world” in terms of empire and trade. She is particularly interested in the people that live in and have passed through the docks and their relationship with British culture.
Boyce has woven local species into the mural. In her conversation with Frieze Magazine, she talks about a species of bombadier beetle which is found exclusively in the docks and its connection with the history of the place. In 2006 a colony of 61 Streaked bombadier beetles was rediscovered in the docklands after having been presumed extinct since 1928. This has led to concerns about protecting the areas of brownfield land in East London – prime land for developers and the “upscaling” and inevitable extinction of local communities, human or otherwise.
Since the 1990s, Boyce’s work has evolved with participation as a defining feature. Boyce herself considers this important and central to her method; visible in the way that she worked with Newham residents and community groups to create the Crossrail mural. Looking through a geopolitical lens, the timing of the Elizabeth line is problematic. Boroughs like Newham, previously a working-class, disenfranchised area, are now witnessing an unprecedented period of gentrification. Crossrail, which prides itself on connecting London and the South East, seems opportune and provokes questions about why it is only now that South East London is being connected to central London with a “state-of-the-art” railway.
With this in mind, Boyce’s process, working with local people and communities, relates directly to one of the issues that Remembrance Day for Lost Species seeks to consider: exploring stories of cultures driven to extinction by unjust power structures. The mural not only remembers but celebrates the history of the area in all its forms, of people, of local flora and fauna, and of the diverse cultures which have created what it has been and will be.
Another example of Boyce’s work as starting a dialogue is her “takeover” of Manchester Art Gallery in January of this year. It involved collaboration to discuss two controversial paintings, one of which, Hylas and the Nymphs (by John William Waterhouse, 1896), features unsettling portrayals of women. Boyce started a dialogue about this piece and gender binary representations with a local drag group and museum staff, which culminated in on-site performances, an art piece in itself. During Boyce’s takeover, the painting was temporarily removed, which caused a furore about censorship, criticisms which Boyce has addressed in her conversation with the Guardian’s Charlotte Higgins.
Boyce’s work promotes conversation and thoughts about local communities’ role in creating art and questioning structures of power. Remembrance Day for Lost Species goes far beyond the animals and plants themselves, and seeks to bring the themes that Boyce discusses in her work – of race, class, gender and how the identities within these classifications are being threatened – to the fore.
Cloe Ofori is a writer and researcher based in Brighton, England.
Hallowed Ground – by Mother Eagle
For the last 5 years I have been in the habit of producing a collection of work each year according to my own brief. Usually this is an idea that forms within the completion of the previous year and then I have to fight with myself to abandon that one and get on with the new.
And so it was as last year’s Remembrance Day for Lost Species exhibition was being hung that I had begun my Hallowed Ground project. This idea hadn’t come to me fully formed and I’d had to do a lot of casting around for the inspiration to sort of glue together. Part of my process was to research ways that other cultures mark their grief, their death customs. This had led me to discover the practice of Sky Burial and Air Sacrifice.
Both practices are types of excarnation, whereby the corpse is placed outside to be exposed to the elements and scavenging animals. In the Mongolian practice of air sacrifice, I discovered the specific ritual of outlining the body with stones, and when the body has completely degenerated back into the natural world, the space within the stones has become a sacred space.
I found this very moving. Considering this concept and applying it to the world’s most critically endangered species made me think about how their habitats have become so rarefied and equally as threatened as to require reverence. The idea of a negative space as an artistic device representing an extremely special, precious and rare place.
I began to research animals on the IUCN Red List that are classified as Critically Endangered but that also have severely threatened habitats. My intention was to create a representation of their home that was both faithful and fantastical. A grave and an afterlife. A place that draws the viewer in to explore, hopefully to delight, and then to ask questions to discover the story of this rare and absent friend.
Rio Pescado Stubfoot Toad
The Rio Pescado Stubfoot toad is so critically endangered that it may already be extinct. It lives in a tiny scrap of Ecuadorian lowland forest that is dwindling away, and lives nowhere else. Indeed, it’s loss of habitat due to agriculture, logging and pollution is the main threat to its existence. One third of all frogs and toads are on the verge of extinction, suffering an 80% loss in the last 3 decades.
Sawfish
The large tooth sawfish is one of the rarest fish in the world, and a living dinosaur, existing for 60 million years at least. Degradation of their preferred habitat of shallow coastal estuaries has removed them from 95% of their historical range. The sawfish has suffered a population decline of 80% since the ‘60s.
Pygmy Three-Toed Sloth
The Pygmy three-toed sloth is found only in a tiny area of red mangrove forest on Isla Escudo de Veraguas, Panama. Despite being an uninhabited island and designated a protected landscape, a number of domestic and international efforts have been mounted to develop tourism on the island. In addition, their mangrove habitat is also threatened, with one in six species facing extinction.
Seychelles Sheath-Tailed Bat
One of the world’s rarest mammals, only found on the Seychelles islands of Silhouette and Mahe, there are estimated only 30-100 individuals remaining. Roosting in granite boulder caves, an introduced invasive species of vine block the cave entrances and reduce insect availability, already in decline due to pesticide use.
Geometric Tortoise
A very small and beautiful tortoise only found in the Cape Floral Kingdom of South Africa. In fact, this is the only species in this series classed as Endangered (not Critically), however destruction of more than 90% of its habitat, an extraordinarily botanically diverse area, itself classed critically endangered as well as ‘100% irreplaceable’, earned its place.
Gooty Tarantula
This otherworldly electric blue arachnid only exists in the dry deciduous forest of Andhra Pradesh, India. Its habitat is rapidly degrading due to logging and firewood harvesting. Population size is unknown but the combination of a tiny natural range and pressure from illegal pet trade paints a sad picture.
Kate Tume is an embroidery artist from Brighton, East Sussex who first learned her craft at her mother’s knee. She attended the Surrey Institute of Art and Design as a Fashion and Illustration student, but is largely self-taught in hand-embroidery techniques. Kate’s work is influenced by folklore, mythology, burial customs and the old Gods. She is currently working on projects around our disappearing natural world, and lost species.
I Felt Despair About Climate Change Until a Brush With Death Changed My Mind – by ALISON SPODEK KEIMOWITZ
This piece is an extract from an article published at Slate. You can read the full text here.
I was dying. Not just in the way that we’re all inching inevitably toward our own deaths each moment; I was hurtling toward a specific death with a name, a shape, and a timeline. I was 37 years old and I was dying of leukemia.
I was lying in a hospital bed, so ill that diagnosis, when someone finally named the doom I had been feeling in my body for months, was a relief. At least the sense of vague terror and impending catastrophe I had been feeling had a name. A cure, in the shape of a stem cell transplant, was possible, but it required the complete and utter dissolution of myself, dangling my broken body over the edge of the very cliff a cure is meant to postpone.
It wasn’t just my body that dissolved in those weeks: My mind and soul were also broken apart, fragmented, and brought to the edge of ruin. In medical terms, I became depressed, hallucinatory, and delusional. And in medical terms, the team of doctors really didn’t have jack-shit to prescribe me except for patience.
I was visited by a mindfulness practitioner during this time, but I was too far gone for prolonged mindfulness practice, unable to bring myself to a set of exercises that had sustained me prior to illness. There was simply no self to bring. Instead my visitor asked me to count to four, in line with my breath. And then to do it again. And to come back to this simple counting whenever I needed it. I could get to four, and then four again. I could get through my pain, my nausea, my misery, for the count of four breaths. And then I could ask myself to do it again.
This practice didn’t make me feel better. I was still miserable and broken and absent. But it gave me the space to sit with that misery, call it by its name, and know its shape. That was valuable, just as the name and shape of the leukemia diagnosis had been valuable some months before.
Three months after my stem cell transplant, I returned back to my home, my husband and children, my life. One year later I returned to work as a professor of chemistry and environmental studies, teaching the same material I had taught before my illness. Some of it was banal: procedures for balancing chemical reactions, reassuring in their straightforward clarity. But some of it took on a new emotional significance—specifically, teaching about climate change, biodiversity, and extinction.
This planet is dying. Not just in the way that life on Earth is always, inevitably beginning and ending, that species are rising and falling, that extinction and evolution occur, and that temperature and sea levels cycle dramatically and irregularly. In the 21st century, Earth is hurtling toward a specific death with a shape, a name, and a timeline. It is dying of global warming, climate change, extinction, biological annihilation, and ocean acidification. The exact names and the exact timing is debated, but the overall trajectory of life on Earth is well-understood: We are in the midst of Earth’s sixth mass extinction, and the odds of human civilization reaching the 22nd century are often estimated at no better than 50/50.
You can continue reading this piece at Slate.
The Environmental Justice Atlas
What is the Environmental Justice Atlas?
The text below is taken from the EJ Atlas website
The Environmental Justice Atlas documents and catalogues social conflict around environmental issues, mapping ecological conflicts and resistance to injustice, and fighting for environmental justice. It is a teaching, networking and advocacy resource – a database used by strategists, activist organisers, scholars, and teachers, as well as citizens wanting to learn more about the often invisible conflicts taking place.
Across the world communities are struggling to defend their land, air, water, forests and their livelihoods from damaging projects and extractive activities with heavy environmental and social impacts: mining, dams, tree plantations, fracking, gas flaring, incinerators, etc. As resources needed to fuel our economy move through the commodity chain from extraction and processing to disposal, at each stage environmental impacts are externalised onto the most marginalised populations. Often this all takes place far from the eyes of concerned citizens or consumers of the end-products.
The EJ Atlas collects these stories of communities struggling for environmental justice from around the world. It aims to make these mobilisations more visible, highlight claims and testimonies and to make the case for true corporate and state accountability for the injustices inflicted through their activities. It also attempts to serve as a virtual space for those working on EJ issues to get information, find other groups working on related issues, and increase the visibility of environmental conflicts.
What is an ecological conflict?
Socio-environmental conflicts are defined as:
Mobilisations by local communities/ social movements – which might include support of national or international networks – against particular economic activities, infrastructure construction, or waste disposal/pollution, where environmental impacts are a key element of their grievances.
The atlas documents social conflicts related to claims against perceived negative social or environmental impacts with the following criteria:
- Economic activity or legislation with actual or potential negative environmental and social outcomes;
- Claim and mobilisation by environmental justice organisation(s) that such harm occurred or is likely to occur as a result of that activity
- Reporting of that particular conflict in one or more media stories.
These conflicts usually arise from structural inequalities of income and power. Dimensions of environmental justice include:
- distribution over the burdens of pollution
- access to environmental resources
- the right to participate in decision-making
- the recognition of alternate world-views and understanding of development.
The action repertoires may include formal claim-making, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, boycotts, strikes, legal actions, civil disobedience, collective violence, international campaigns and other action forms. In the act of claiming redistributions, these conflicts often form part of – or lead to – larger gender, class, caste and ethnic struggles.
What are the drivers of these conflicts?
Growing consumption of resources is fuelling ever more conflicts globally. Most of these are used to satisfy the material needs of the rich segments of the world population. But over-consumption by the rich visits ecological violence on the poor. It is a story of luxury for some versus livelihood for many.
The search for resources to feed the growing global socio-metabolism of the economy also leads to an expansion of the “commodity frontiers”, with extractive projects now reaching the last untouched places on earth such as the Arctic, deep sea, remote forests inhabited by indigenous populations, or even the centres of industrialised economies, such as middle-class communities threatened by fracking. The EJ Atlas aims to expose and explain the material dimensions of socio-environmental conflicts related to extractivist economies, criminalisation of dissent, and lack of democratic participation and decisional processes.
Access to justice is often elusive for impacted communities as many companies enjoy impunity for grave human rights infractions, corruption, and other abuses. Through subsidiaries, for example, mother companies can escape prosecution for criminal acts. Local governments are often not able or willing to prosecute environmental crimes because they are desperate for much needed investment in strategic sectors, or have come to exchange agreements with them, or feel under threat by creditors and international finance institutions. At the same time, the home countries of the companies refuse to rein in their companies as their only objective is pushing their companies into new markets or getting geopolitical control over those territories. Increasing financialisation of the economy has made such global justice issues much more complicated, as the actors behind many decisions related to investments and projects are private investments funds, private equities, pension funds, etc which fall outside any democratic control.
To deal with this lack of accountability, civil society organisations argue for international mechanisms to deal with abuses, such as the Eradicating Ecocide initiative. Further, legal scholars argue that communities should have the right to seek justice in the home countries of the companies if it is not available at home.
In some cases, communities succeed in getting a seat at the table, changing laws and legislations and contribute to institutional changes that lead to more equitable outcomes and increased citizen participation in decision-making processes. Of the cases currently in the map, almost 18% have been qualified as “successes” for environmental justice by the reporter, when court cases were won, communities were strengthened, access to the commons was reclaimed, or projects were scrapped. These victories are a testament to the power of protest and the ability to impact the political process. They also show the transformative power of resistance, where communities gain in terms of self consciousness, community organising, political action and incisiveness, when they push forward alternative projects to the imposed ones and their own resistance narratives and life philosophy and cosmology concepts (like Sumak Kawsay, Ubuntu, Lekil Kuxlejal, Radical Ecological Democracy, etc).
To learn more about access to justice, watch this video: “Access to Justice and Extractive Industries”
What is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice was born as a slogan for the first time in the United States during the 1980s among Black and Latinx communities. They mobilised against injustices perpetrated in their communities by polluting industries and waste disposal facilities. It later became an analytical frame, largely in relation to concerns about the unequal distribution of social and environmental costs between different human groups, classes, ethnicities but also in relation to gender and age. EJ draws attention to the link between pollution, race and poverty, and tackles socio-spatial distribution of “bads” (emissions, toxins) and “goods” (like green spaces and better services).
It later expanded as a concept and theoretical framework, including multi-dimensional and interlinked aspects of justice related to three fundamental dimension of EJ: distribution, recognition and participation, as explained above. It has also globalised, tackling issues such as trade agreements, the transfers of wastes, climate change and the Rights of Nature and has served to link up groups and networks within a common similar frame and understanding.
The global dimension is evident when it comes to trade and environmental degradation. A mine, a dam, a road in the forest are not isolated objects but connected sites along which value flows, accumulation occurs and costs are externalised.
Environmental Justice is both a social movement and an activist/mobilised science, and thus offers the potential to bring together citizens, researchers and scholars to create knowledge as part of a global and globalising environmental justice movement.
Explore the EJ Atlas here. Like it on Facebook, and sign up for the newsletter. Please use and share the resources in its resource library and blog. If you have information about a conflict not included on the map, you are invited to add it. You may register here. Share the website and maps and help be a part of a growing global movement for environmental and social justice.
Apology to the Great Auk, 2017 – by Marcus Coates
Apology to the Great Auk, 2017 from marcus coates on Vimeo.
During the summer of 2017, British artist Marcus Coates travelled to Fogo Island, Newfoundland, to ask for an official apology to be given the Great Auk, a flightless bird once numerous around the island, but extinct since 1844 due to excessive hunting. The resulting film, Apology to the Great Auk documents a sincere attempt by the community of Fogo Island, through the specially appointed apology committee, to respond and learn from the loss of what can only now be imagined.
You can read the full text of the Apology on Marcus’ website here.
Marcus’ work uses a wide range of means to delve into the more-than-human world. It’s often participatory and often uses ritual. Well-known projects include The Trip and Arrivals/Departures, Rituals. Ask The Wild is an ongoing series of panel events that ask what can be learned from other species to inform the problems and questions about human society. This year, Marcus made Extinct Animals, a collection of cast hands depicting different animal species whose extinctions were caused by humans.