D.E.A.D.line
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.
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