bre/\king /\/p/\r† †oge†her. Perfor/\/\ing on†ologically-orien†ed-design \/\/i†h dying /\/\oun†/\ins /\nd dead gl/\ciers (breaking apart together. Performing ontologically-oriented-design with dying mountains and dead glaciers) is the Professional Doctorate (PD) project of s†ëf/\n sch/\efer (S†ëfan Schäfer.)

Within the context of the climate crisis, mourning rituals concerning (future) environmental loss 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, wearing black. Since then, glacier funerals have 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. The performed rituals are usually held for other humans and projected on a landscape. Although realizing the benefits of creating awareness about climate change in this manner, sch/\efer sees problematic tendencies in both. First, predominantly Western-eurocentric rituals, imply a colonialist dispersion of commemorative ritual across the globe. A “one funeral fits all” approach is rooted in a capitalist funeral industry. In an dwith his research, sch/\efer claims for rituals emerging in, with and from a mountain. Characteristics of, and relations with the mountain rooted in intimacy are essential in this process. Second, the sheer projection of rituals for humans on a mountain keeps up the widespread Western idea that human stands above nature. 

At this point, sch/\efer reformulated his research questions ot the following:

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, based on intimacy and “care as  an event”, operate as counter-perspectives on this tendency? 

Considering (future) ecological loss, how can features of ontologically-oriented-design (Escobar, 2018) provide methods to emerge commemorative rituals in, with and from a dying landscape, in this case the “dying” Hochvogel mountain? 

Conducted through transdisciplinary practice research operating across art, design and performance, Stëfan’s methodogical approaches include: fieldworks to the ‘dying’ Hochvogel mountain (AUT/DE) and the remains of the ‘dead’ glacier Ok in Iceland; on-site conversations with people visiting the mountain and glacier; interviews with the initiators of the first glacier funeral held in Iceland in 2019; desk research including literature review about the “ontological turn”, working hands-on with features of “Ontologically-Oriented-Design” (Escobar, 2018), the pluriverse, climate justice, landslide research, mountain ritual and – performance; practice research through an iterative cycle of experiments and workshares related to field work and readings in the form of miniatures, making wearables, prompts, visualisations, participatory installations, experimental writing, (relational) landscape translation.